Why Mummy Swears Read online

  Hi Ellen,

  Halloween Disco

  Hall is booked for Friday 28th October 6.30–8.30pm. Parents will complain this is not actually Halloween/why is it on a Friday night/that it starts and finishes too early or too late. Tell them it is so that they can go trick or treating with their darlings, that it’s on a Friday so the children aren’t tired for school and that they don’t have to bastarding come if they don’t like the time. Any other complaints, tell them to go fuck themselves.

  Parents MUST stay with their children – this is why we run a bar so we can fleece them for overpriced tepid Chardonnay to numb the pain of the disco (I’ve already got the licence). The teachers used to come and supervise, but refuse to do this now due to issues with parents taking the piss, and not turning up to pick kids up on time. Under no circumstances let unsupervised children in, or there will be carnage. Especially watch out for Oscar Fitzpatrick’s mum, who will claim she is just popping to the shop and will be back in a mo, only to vanish for the whole time so Oscar runs amok, and Edie Prescott’s mum who will claim she can’t stay as she has a feverish child at home who needs her. I fell for this the first two years and then realised I was being scammed.

  There is usually a tuckshop, apple bobbing, doughnuts on a string, face painting, tattoos and a slime lucky dip. Poundland is now your friend.

  You will need to send at least six emails appealing for volunteers and threaten to call the whole thing off before you get enough people to help.

  Have Fun! Xxxx

  I am rather warming to Lucy’s Mummy. I had no idea she was so sweary, or nurtured a similar hatred for People as I do. Nor, to my shame, did I realise how much work she had put into the PTA, or how utterly thankless it was, as we fled from her brandishing her clipboard and her books of raffle tickets, assuming she only did it to feel important. I fear I misjudged her, but when am I going to send these emails/do all this organising? I only just managed to shut the window with the email before Alan came sniffing behind me, still on the track of the minty chocolate (which suggests that he can whang on about bulletproof coffee and the evils of carbs all he likes. Anyone that obsessed by the smell of chocolate has something missing from their lives), because I don’t feel the PTA really fits in with my new image of cool not-quite-a-millennial in my should-probably-eat-fewer-Mint-Clubs-because-they’re-still-a-bit-tight trendy trousers.

  Thursday, 13 October

  I am so bloody tired. I feel like I’ve spent all week before and after work just running on the spot to catch up. Work actually feels like a break, apart from Lucy’s Mummy’s emails, which are still pinging in regularly. I sent an email to all the parents at school, suggesting a meeting to discuss planning for the disco, but little to my surprise the silence was deafening, so instead Sam, Cara and Katie came to mine tonight and we fed the cherubs fishfingers while we drank wine and tried to come up with new and exciting ideas for the disco, before deciding that we couldn’t be arsed, and we would just do as Lucy’s Mummy suggested and go to Poundland and buy a load of tat to flog onto the kids at a suitable mark-up.

  ‘Do you think we should dress up?’ said Katie.

  ‘I think it’s expected …’ I said gloomily.

  ‘We could cause outrage by wearing slutty Halloween costumes,’ suggested Cara cheerfully. ‘People are always complaining about the lack of dads involved in these events. I’m sure the three of us in some fishnets and PVC would shake them up a bit. And Sam could provide the eye candy for the mums!’

  ‘I’m not some cheap piece of meat!’ said Sam with wounded pride.

  ‘Of course you’re not!’ I comforted him. ‘You’re totally fillet steak. Well, definitely rib eye, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, go on!’ cajoled Cara. ‘Be a sport. I’m single, remember, and my opportunities for meeting men are limited – I have to take my chances where I can. It might be fun!’

  ‘There is nothing “fun” about middle-aged women in fishnets!’ I responded with as much dignity as I could. Unfortunately, that was the moment that Simon chose to walk into the room.

  ‘Fishnets?’ he said in glee. ‘I think you should definitely wear fishnets!’

  ‘See?’ said Cara.

  ‘I am not wearing fucking fishnets! We are meant to be discussing where to buy the cheap booze to mark up and flog to the parents, not whether or not we should wear fishnets. What if we are mistaken for prostitutes on the way home?’

  ‘Go on!’ said Cara.

  ‘Go oooon!’ said Simon.

  ‘I will wear fishnets, if Sam will wear fishnets,’ I offered.

  ‘I have a position in the community to uphold,’ insisted Sam. ‘I can’t turn up at the school disco dressed as Frank-N-Furter. I am a respectable person.’

  The fishnets debate rumbled on for some time, and by the time everyone had to take their children home to bed, no real decisions had been made about the disco (except that I was not wearing fishnets). I fear we are not taking PTAing as seriously as Lucy Atkinson’s Perfect Mummy and Fiona Montague did. Maybe I should get a clipboard to brandish menacingly, to keep everybody on track? Or just set an agenda before the meeting. That seems awfully bossy, though. I don’t want everyone to hate me because I’ve turned into Mrs Bossypants.

  Friday, 14 October

  The telephone call I had been awaiting from Jessica after last Sunday’s disastrous lunch with Daddy finally materialised.

  Jessica, with her usual dismissive approach to everything I do, obviously decided to call me at work.

  ‘I can’t really talk now,’ I hissed. ‘I’m at work.’

  ‘Oh God, Ellen, it’s not like you do anything very important. You just faff around with computers,’ scoffed Jessica. ‘Of course you have time to talk to me.’

  ‘It’s a bit more than faffing around with computers,’ I responded with dignity. ‘I design software interfaces.’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ insisted Jessica. ‘You’re hardly saving lives with Médecins Sans Frontières, are you?’

  ‘Well, neither are you. You’re a bloody banker. At least my work is useful to some people instead of just being a … a … recession causer!’

  ‘Ellen, do you actually have any idea of what I do?’

  ‘I have as much idea as you do about what I do.’

  ‘Anyway,’ sighed Jessica, ‘I’m at work too, so if I’ve got time to talk, so do you.’

  ‘No, I don’t! And we don’t all have the luxury of our own office to just call people and chat. I’m hiding in the bloody loo. I only answered in case it was some kind of family emergency, which it clearly isn’t if you only want to chat about Natalia a whole week after we met her!’

  ‘Honestly, Ellen, the fact that at forty-three –’

  ‘Forty-two! I’m forty-two!’

  ‘Whatever. That you still have to hide in the loo to take a personal call is hardly my fault, is it?’

  ‘I’m hanging up now, someone is coming.’ I hissed, as Lydia shot into the bathroom, also hissing furtively into her phone before swiftly clicking it off when she saw me.

  ‘Everything all right?’ I asked breezily.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lydia quickly. ‘Yes, all fine. Such a pain when someone calls when you’re on the way to the loo!’

  ‘They must have a sixth sense!’ I laughed, as I wondered who Lydia’s call was. Probably not a bossy boots sister who thinks everyone has to dance to their tune just because she is the eldest and has a very important job that therefore means she can feel superior.

  Saturday, 15 October

  Hurrah! SUCH FUN! After what felt like the longest week in the world, tonight was Hannah and Charlie’s engagement party. Tired though I was, I was very much looking forward to a night getting drunk with people who I could just be myself with, instead of sucking in my stomach and worrying that my emergency cool trainers purchase was still not ‘on fleek’ and I would shortly be shunned as old and sad and past it, or worst just a bit weird and inappropriate. I hadn’t dared make any jokes all week because
I was scared that my new colleagues would not get my sense of humour, and so I have been very serious and just nodded and smiled a lot. I haven’t even read a single Daily Mail article – I think I might crash their servers if I tried to go on the website, an alarm would probably sound and my ergonomic chair would eject me from the building. I feel strangely liberated by this, but also slightly adrift without my daily diet of Z-list celebrity shit.

  Hannah stuck to her guns and refused to let me take over organising the party, no matter how many Pinterest boards I bombarded her with, but even though I still maintain that it could only have been improved by upside-down umbrellas hanging from the ceiling filled with ivy, and some hessian table runners, it was still a very nice evening.

  It is quite blissful that after a few years of wedding drought, once all our friends were married, some of them are being kind enough to get divorced and have second marriages, so we have a lovely round of more weddings to look forward to. Simon called me a monster when I remarked on this, and suggested that perhaps our friends were not going through major emotional traumas and life upheavals merely to provide me with an opportunity to browse the Coast sale and get smashed on warm Prosecco. Obviously I knew that. I only meant that I do love a wedding. And a nice silk floral frock …

  Hannah looked all glowing and gloriously happy (so glowing, in fact, that had she not been necking the champagne like it was going out of fashion, I would have suspected she was indeed awaiting the patter of tiny feet), and Charlie looked like he was about to burst with pride.

  They both made a lovely speech together, the best bit of which was obviously where they mentioned me getting them together and everyone became quite misty-eyed.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely?’ I said to Simon. ‘It almost makes me wish we were getting married again.’

  Simon choked. ‘Bloody hell, never again! It took long enough to pay off one wedding!’

  ‘We could always renew our vows?’ I sighed.

  ‘I thought you once said that every time you heard about a couple renewing their vows, your first thought was always, “Oooh, I wonder which one of them cheated, and is having to prove their commitment with a vow renewal?” And whenever you see celebrities who make a big thing of renewing their vows, they’re always divorced shortly afterwards.’

  ‘True,’ I lamented. ‘Mariah Carey and Thingy she was married to apparently renewed their vows every single year, and that didn’t exactly work out terribly well for them, did it? Maybe we should just have a second honeymoon instead.’

  ‘If we’re not getting married, surely it’s just a nice holiday, not a second honeymoon?’ objected Simon.

  ‘Why do you always have to be so fucking literal about everything?’ I said crossly. ‘I was just trying to be romantic, that’s all! You should try it sometime, you know. It wouldn’t fucking kill you!’

  ‘I am romantic, darling. I put the toilet seat down, don’t I?’

  ‘Yes, and actually, I rather wish you wouldn’t, because then Peter comes along and doesn’t bother to put it back up and just pisses all over it, and then I come along and sit in it. There is nothing romantic about sitting in someone else’s cold urine and then spending the rest of the day sniffing suspiciously at yourself and wondering if you got it on your jeans and if you now smell of wee, and if maybe you should explain to people that you aren’t incontinent, your son is just a filthy, lazy, pig troll who pisses on anything that takes his fancy – oh hello, Mrs P! I didn’t see you there.’

  Hannah’s mum had come over to chat to us. I do adore Hannah’s mum, but however many times she has instructed me to call her Julia, to me she is forever Mrs P. I think it’s actually etched into my DNA now – I couldn’t ever call her anything else. I did try to call her Julia once, but I couldn’t even get the word out. Hannah’s mum virtually adopted me when Hannah and I were teenagers, and I probably spent more time at her house than I did my own. On my wedding day, my own mother straightened my veil, looked at me critically and then said, ‘Well, I suppose he knows why he’s marrying you. He’s a very patient man, anyway, I’ll give him that!,’ whereas Hannah’s mum took me aside and said that she only had one piece of advice for me about marriage and grown-up life, and that was not to bother with ironing. She said it had taken her years to realise that it was quite unnecessary and a massive waste of time, and although most things in a marriage needed to be worked out by the two people who were actually in it, the ironing advice would stand me in good stead and save me from wasting as much time as she had. She was right too. I have taken her advice religiously. The advent of the wonder of non-iron shirts has also helped a lot, of course.

  ‘Isn’t this LOVELY!’ beamed Mrs P. ‘Charlie is so much nicer than that prick Dan she married the first time.’

  ‘Isn’t it just fabulous?’ I beamed back. ‘I was just trying to persuade Simon that we should renew our vows, but he isn’t keen.’

  ‘Quite right!’ said Mrs P. ‘Waste of money, if you ask me. I’ve never really seen the point myself, and everyone will only assume you’re doing it because one of you has had an affair. Which you haven’t, I presume?’

  ‘Of course not!’ I spluttered, while Simon smirked smugly beside me.

  ‘Good,’ said Mrs P. ‘There does seem to be an awful lot of it about these days. Of course, in my day it was all about the wife-swapping.’

  Simon choked.

  ‘Oh no, not us,’ she went on. ‘But apparently there was a lot of it about. We never seemed to be invited to those sorts of parties, of course, but any time we did go to a party, Edward always made me put the car keys right at the bottom of my handbag so we didn’t give anyone the wrong idea. Though, seemingly, it was mostly the PTA members who were at it. That’s why I never joined the PTA when you girls were at school. Edward wouldn’t let me, in case we accidentally ended up at a sex party.’

  Disconcerting though it was to hear Mrs P talking about swingers and sex parties, one of the best things about talking to your friends’ parents is that however old one might get, to them you will always be a girl. It’s nice to be referred to as a girl by someone in a non-ironic way.

  ‘Ellen’s just joined the PTA, you know, Julia,’ said Simon. ‘Do you think she’s trying to tell me something?’

  ‘Oh no, I shouldn’t think so!’ said Mrs P. ‘There’s the internet now. I expect that’s where people go to find sex parties, instead of having to make their own fun through the PTA. You can find anything on the internet, you know. I almost bought a hedgehog the other day, to keep the slugs down in the garden, but then it turned out to be some sort of dwarf African hedgehog that you have to keep indoors, and what good would that be to my hostas, now? Oh look, I think Hannah wants me for something. I’d better go and be a dutiful mother. Lovely to see you, darling, and stay away from the sex parties, won’t you?’

  Simon was still chortling to himself at the thought of the PTA sex parties as I hissed at him, ‘See? I was right to say we shouldn’t wear fishnets at the Halloween disco. We would be giving totally the wrong impression, especially now we know what we know about the PTAs in the eighties. In fact, I think I might have to totally rethink my idea of having an eighties disco as a fundraiser, in case people think it’s going to be a sex party. I don’t even really know what a sex party is, other than they sound unhygienic,’ when Sam came over full of indignation.

  ‘Hannah told me she invited some bloke she works with tonight for me to have a gander at,’ he complained.

  ‘And?’ I asked. ‘That was nice of her. You were only complaining the other day how you were going to be alone and unloved forever.’

  ‘Well, look at him!’ Sam gestured to a fairly innocuous-looking chap, who was now talking to Hannah’s dad.

  ‘He looks all right? All his own teeth. Bit beardy for me, and the shirt has definite hipster overtones, but all in all he looks inoffensive.’

  ‘Exactly!’ snapped Sam. ‘He’s inoffensive-looking. He has enough of a beard to show that he wants to be a hipster,
but not enough courage of his convictions to carry it through. Likewise the shirt is just a bit hipster, but not full-on hipster with braces and going to bars where they serve artisanal fucking cocktails in jam-jars. He has a bike, but not a penny farthing, but he talked for fifteen minutes without a pause about bastarding coffee. He is boring as fuck and a pretentious twat. What did Hannah think I would have in common with him?’

  ‘But Sam, you hate hipsters,’ I said, confused. ‘You have repeatedly and loudly voiced your intense, bordering on obsessive, dislike of hipsters. Now you are complaining because he’s not a hipster?’

  ‘I am complaining because he’s too boring to even be a proper hipster. It would be less offensive if he was a hipster!’

  ‘Would it?’

  ‘Well, no. That would be really fucking annoying too, because then clearly Hannah wouldn’t have listened to a single word I’d said, ever. But that’s not the point.’

  ‘I’m still not sure what the point is,’ I said.

  ‘Neither am I,’ said Sam sadly. ‘I suppose I just live in eternal hope that one day I will meet The One and when Hannah said she’d invited someone I might like, I thought maybe he would be The One, and instead he’s this boring little man that even in my youthful man-whore days I don’t think I could’ve got off my tits enough to fuck, let alone now, when I’m grown-up and sensible and don’t even know where you would buy poppers should you want them anymore, and I am unreasonably disappointed. Until a few months ago I thought I was resigned to being alone, you know. Me, the kids, the dog. That was all I needed. But now Sophie’s going to high school next year, and it’s starting to dawn on me that the children are going to grow up and leave me, and then it will just be me and the dog, and he will die, and then it will just be me. Just me. And I’ve still got all my life to live, and I’ve got all my love to give.’