Playgroups and Prosecco

by Jo Middleton

  ‘Bumper balloons!’ he yelled in my face (it felt like). ‘Hours of fun!’

  For whom, exactly, I wondered?

  ‘Can I have a bumper balloon, Mummy?’ asked Jess, jiggling about excitedly.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘we’ve spent enough money and we don’t have room for such a big balloon.’ It was one of those giant round ones with an elastic handle that you can punch backwards and forwards.

  ‘We can keep it in my room,’ she said, ‘there’s space for it there.’ She was bouncing up and down now. The sock fell out of her hair and I scooped it up. The balloon man looked at it, then down at my feet.

  ‘Only £4,’ said the balloon man helpfully.

  ‘Only £4, Mummy!’ said Jess, with no concept of the fact that I could buy an entire bottle of wine in Aldi for £4.

  ‘Oh, what a shame!’ I said, ‘I only have £2 left, never mind.’ I took her hand, ready to walk away.

  ‘Ah well,’ said the balloon man, ‘it’s nearly the end of the day, I can let you have it for two.’ And he pulled the biggest balloon out of the bunch in his hand, gave it to Jess and smiled at me.

  What an utter bastard.

  Sunday 9 September

  Spent most of the day trying to stop Jess hitting her giant balloon around the house with a plastic golf club. Man, those things really ricochet, don’t they?

  Whenever I tried to take away either the golf club or the balloon and suggest that she might like to do something different for a while, like perhaps some Peppa Pig colouring sheets or lying down quietly thinking about life, she started screeching and hitting the balloon even more ferociously than she already was. My choices seemed to be a) listen to Jess howling or b) accept the fact that everything I own would soon be smashed into a million pieces.

  To be honest, I wasn’t feeling either as a relaxing Sunday vibe. Before I had children I imagined my Sundays more like this:

  10 a.m.: Small child climbs sleepily into my king-sized bed, rubbing her eyes and looking up at me adorably. ‘Mummy, you’re so pretty!’ she says, like she can hardly believe it. Colin Firth offers to get up and make me coffee and bring me the papers.

  10.30: I read about world events (in the fantasy I care about world events and am very knowledgeable about politics) while Colin Firth passes me small, freshly baked pastries at intervals. Small child quietly reads Anne of Green Gables.

  You get the idea.

  (Question: why does Colin Firth only sound sexy if you call him ‘Colin Firth’, as though that’s his first name? When we are married, I will have to use his full name at all times. ‘Oh, this is my husband, Colin Firth.’ ‘Colin Firth, darling, would you mind passing my prosecco?’, etc, etc.)

  Had a ‘no’ from the wedding venue. ‘Loving Dog Sitter’ job looking increasingly tempting.

  Tuesday 11 September

  Flo is still glued to her phone. I tried, casually, to get a look over her shoulder this evening as I came into the living room. Just in the name of internet safety, you understand, nothing creepy. Internet safety is important you know. At least, that’s what I told myself when I spent all that time researching apps and trying to set up parental controls on all of our various devices. I don’t know what it is about getting old that makes technology seem so much more complicated, but I felt as though I didn’t even know what half the words meant when I was doing that. I almost called Jess in to help, but I thought that would rather defeat the point – like getting a toddler to unscrew a childproof bottle of Calpol for you.

  ‘What are you doing, Mum?’ said Flo, clutching her phone to her chest. Apparently I hadn’t been as stealthy as I thought.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said, super casually. ‘I was about to make a cup of tea and just wondered if you wanted one?’

  ‘And you thought you’d find out by trying to look at my phone?’ she said.

  ‘It caught my eye, that’s all,’ I said sitting down on the sofa and switching on the television. Flo stared at me.

  ‘I thought you were making a cup of tea?’ she asked. Damn. Caught out.

  Wednesday 12 September

  The editor of the Dorset Echo, Leon, called me this morning about the Editorial Assistant job, which I had actually forgotten about. (Hopefully that didn’t come across in our chat.) He asked me, theoretically, how soon I’d be able to start. Apparently, they had someone leave very unexpectedly and are in a rush to fill the role. This could be perfect for me – a desperate employer is exactly what I need. I said I could start as soon as they wanted.

  I’m going for an interview tomorrow afternoon.

  Thursday 13 September

  The first question Leon asked me when I arrived for my interview at the Echo today was ‘did you write your CV yourself?’ This seemed a bit of an odd question to me – who else would have written it? Was he implying that perhaps it looked more like Jess had done it?

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘is there a problem with it?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Leon, ‘it’s just very nicely laid out, so I wondered if you’d had it professionally done.’

  An excellent start. Clearly the bar here is set very low. Leon asked me a few questions about previous jobs and told me a bit about the role.

  ‘It’s three days a week,’ he said, ‘Monday to Wednesday. The paper comes out on Thursday, so our deadline is midday on Wednesday.’ He explained that my role would be supporting the editorial team – typing things up, getting content on to the website, that sort of thing. It didn’t sound exactly thrilling but beggars and choosers and all that. Plus, surely working in a newsroom would be exciting, wouldn’t it? Even if you weren’t doing the reporting?

  After the interview I was left on my own to do a short test. I had to read through a mocked-up newspaper article and pick out all the spelling and grammar mistakes. They were all pretty obvious there/their type errors, so I’d feel pretty ashamed, given my English degree, if I didn’t get full marks on that one.

  They’re going to give me a call tomorrow. I’ve arranged to have dinner with Kier next Wednesday to celebrate/commiserate the job accordingly.

  When I put Jess to bed tonight I could hear Flo in her room, talking to someone on FaceTime. New boyfriend, maybe? Not sure how best to approach it. I don’t want to just ignore it because I want her to know I care, but also want to respect her privacy and not jump to conclusions. Decided to ask WIB for advice.

  ‘I think Flo might have a boyfriend,’ I wrote.

  ‘Ooh, really?’ replied Sierra. ‘Has she started reading poetry and listening to Joni Mitchell?’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s what modern teenagers do when they get boyfriends,’ I said. ‘I think it’s all about eyeliner and Snapchat filters, nowadays. They spend hours agonising over being “left on read” and who liked whose pictures.’

  ‘What’s left on read?’ asked Lou.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said, ‘but I heard it in a song, so it’s definitely a thing.’

  Friday 14 September

  I got the job!

  I start on Monday. It’s really soon but it will at least minimise the amount of time I spend worrying about what to wear and whether or not I’m going to make a fool of myself by not knowing anything about politics.

  I’ve managed to reorganise hours at nursery to that Jess does a full day on Tuesday and up to 3 p.m. on Monday. Sierra is going to pick her up and give her tea on a Monday and Ian will be in charge of Wednesdays as usual, so it should all work out OK. It means Flo has to let herself in after school two days a week and be by herself for a couple of hours, but as long as I leave the remote controls somewhere visible I doubt she’ll even realise I’m not there.

  Jess refused her dinner tonight. She said the cucumber was ‘too spicy’.

  Saturday 15 September

  I’m totally done with Jess’s fussy eating. I can barely get her to eat anything at the moment, let alone anything with a fake semblance of nutrition. I don’t understand how she actually stays alive, sometimes. How does she not keel
over with exhaustion?

  I made myself feel worse by googling some sample menus for three-year-olds. Something like this is apparently what I should be aiming for:

  Breakfast: One slice wholegrain toast with sliced egg and tomatoes. Glass of semi-skimmed milk.

  Snack: Half a cup of blueberries and a plain yogurt plus water.

  Lunch: Bean and rice soup and a small wholemeal roll. Carrot and celery sticks plus a tablespoon of hummus for dipping. Glass of semi-skimmed milk.

  Snack: Apple slices, thinly spread with nut butter.

  Dinner: Wholewheat pasta with olive oil, fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and basil plus steamed green beans.

  Snack: Cottage cheese with fresh pineapple.

  There is just so much to talk about in this menu that I don’t even know where to start. Firstly – soup? Who gives a three-year-old soup? Jess can barely eat a cheese sandwich without dropping it or getting it in her hair. Soup takes some serious spoon skills, surely?

  Steamed green beans?

  Cottage cheese? Can you even imagine?

  I decided to keep a food diary for Jess tomorrow so I can compare.

  Sunday 16 September

  Food diary, Jess:

  Breakfast: Toast and Marmite – inside circle of the toast only, so that when you put the four pieces together there is just a round section missing from the middle. Yogurt – half in mouth, half on floor.

  Snack: Mini box of raisins. (I also gave her a banana but she sat on most of it.)

  Lunch: Roast chicken, one roast potato, about twenty peas, six bits of carrot. (Had to be rinsed and re-plated as I stupidly poured gravy on everything.) Strawberries and cream.

  Snack: Cup of dry cereal while she played ponies. Much of it fed to ponies. Two Jaffa Cakes. (Her mother’s daughter.)

  Tea: Half a cheese and cucumber sandwich, initially rejected because it was in squares and not triangles.

  Snack: Apple – carried around for about an hour and nibbled extensively but essentially the same size at the end as when it started.

  Monday 17 September

  First day at work!

  Because the previous Editorial Assistant had left suddenly, I don’t get the luxury of any kind of handover this week – no useful bits of information in polypockets or handy Post-it notes left in key places. Instead, I got shown where the kettle was and asked to make five coffees, one white no sugar, one white two sugars, one white with soy milk and two black no sugar. I felt that I might as well have got a job in Costa.

  Not exactly the best start, but when I was left alone in the kitchen I did discover a packet of Hobnobs, so I ate two while I waited for the kettle to boil.

  Having distributed the drinks, I was handed a stack of paper by Leon. ‘These are all the sports and funeral reports from the end of last week and over the weekend,’ he said. ‘Here’s a copy of last week’s paper,’ he said, adding that to the pile, ‘so you can see how they are laid out. If you could get all these typed up this morning that would be a great start. Just Word docs in the relevant folders on the shared drive is perfect. And your desk is that one in the corner.’ He pointed to a table stacked high with yellowing editions of local papers.

  I took my armful of papers and went and sat down. There was a note on my keyboard with my username and password. I logged in, opened Word and looked at the top sheet on the pile. It was results from the Wednesday night skittle league.

  ‘Match Results for Wednesday 12 September,’ it began. The handwriting was barely readable, as though they’d picked the oldest member of the team, cornered him at the end of the evening after eight pints of cider, and given him an ancient biro that someone had found on the bar behind the four-year-old jar of pickled eggs.

  ‘Division A,’ it continued, ‘Vikings 383 (Stuart Bird 52) Bird in Hand 431 (John Hockey 60), Ring O Bells 392, (Graham Trump 58) Bell Ends 372 (Nigel Wadham 55).’

  It carried on like this for literally pages. There were about twenty teams in each division and five divisions in total.

  Between 9 and 1, when I went for lunch, the only time anyone spoke was to either to say things like ‘Is anyone putting the kettle on?’ or to answer the phone to people who had accidentally come through to the newsroom when they wanted the advertising department.

  It definitely was not the hotbed of intrigue that I’d imagined it might be.

  I can’t take the stress of Flo’s imaginary boyfriend on top of a new job, so I decided to just ask her straight out.

  ‘Do I have a boyfriend?’ she said, looking aghast. ‘Mum, have you seen the boys in my school?’ I had, but I thought perhaps that greasy hair and skinny legs was the thing. ‘Honestly, they are all gross.’

  ‘You’ve just seemed to be on your phone quite a bit,’ I said, ‘and you’ve been laughing.’

  She laughed at that. It did sound a bit pathetic when I said it out loud. ‘It’s the memes, Mum,’ she said. ‘Everyone loves a GCSE meme.’

  ‘Do they?’ I said doubtfully. ‘But what about the other night when you were on FaceTime in your room?’

  ‘That was Grandma and Grandad!’ she said. ‘They wanted to know what I wanted for my birthday. Honestly, Mum, if I had a boyfriend I’d tell you.’ Wow, really? She’d tell me? This seemed like a bit of a parenting win. Open communication, trust etc.

  ‘I’d ask for your advice so I’d know what not to do,’ she added. ‘No offence, Mum.’ Oh. Still, though, she’d tell me. That’s the important thing. And really, I am being very useful by experiencing life in all its forms so that she can learn from my mistakes.

  Tuesday 18 September

  Today I had the absolute thrill of writing captions for the property pages. How many ways actually are there to describe a standard three-bedroom semi? Phrases I have severely overused today:

  ‘Well-proportioned reception room’ – i.e., quite small

  ‘Low-maintenance garden’ – i.e., quite small

  ‘Third bedroom ideal as a nursery or study’ – i.e., quite small

  I hate to say it, but I almost found myself longing for the challenge of a fundraising application.

  Jess had a tantrum on the kitchen floor at teatime because I wouldn’t let her eat her pizza frozen. I think she’s finding the change in nursery hours a bit tiring. One of my neighbours came to the door mid-tantrum to say that he was having a few people round on Saturday night – just an ‘intimate gathering’ – and to let me know that it might be a little bit noisy.

  I raised my eyebrows and cocked my head towards the kitchen. Jess’s screams of ‘I hate you! You’re a poo!’ were clearly audible. He listened for a few seconds and I could almost hear him mentally crossing me off the invite list.

  Who am I kidding? I was never on the invite list.

  I went back into the kitchen and consoled Jess by filling a Sylvanian Families wheelbarrow with frozen peas.

  (I wonder if other people hear ‘intimate gathering’ and think ‘pubic lice’?)

  Wednesday 19 September

  Date night tonight with Kier. I’d been pretty excited about it as the WhatsApping had been going really well and we seemed to have a lot in common – two children, love of Jaffa Cakes, etc. I had a slight red-flag moment when he’d suggested we have dinner at Pizza Express. No offence, Pizza Express, I like a standard pizza chain as much as the next mum of a toddler, but if I’m driving all the way into Dorchester to eat on my own with another grown-up then I want to go somewhere that doesn’t offer colouring sheets and babyccinos.

  His second suggestion was Prezzo, but I chose to brush over the weird Italian chain restaurant obsession and instead offered up Eat Japan, a little sushi restaurant in the town centre whose name someone had clearly spent a lot of time over. I thought sushi would be a good test for a first date. After cheese-sandwich Danny I need to filter out the fussy eaters right away.

  I was waiting outside at five to seven, pretending to do doing something very important on my phone so as not to look sad and lonely, when I spotted Kier wavi
ng at me in the distance.

  At least I thought it was in the distance.

  But then there he was in front of me. All 5’ 3” of him. OK, so that’s a guess, but I’m 5’ 6” and he was a significant chunk smaller than me. I tried to look as if I’d not even noticed, but then I did an awkward crouch to kiss him hello and it felt like it had when I used to bend down to say goodbye to Flo at the primary school gates.

  We went inside and up the stairs to the restaurant, me walking behind him and trying to keep at least a stair behind at all times to even things out. All I could think about was what a good job it was that I’d gone for flats.

  Once we were sitting down it was fine – from the waist up he was obviously a regular height and he didn’t have tiny hands like a child or anything like that. In fact, after the one glass of wine I was allowing myself because of the driving, I was warming up nicely to him. He even did this very sexy thing with the ordering where he asked if he could order for both of us. What he lacked in height he definitely made up for in confidence.

  There was a bit of a sticky moment at one point where he seemed to want to address the elephant (small) in the room.

  ‘You looked a little surprised when you first saw me,’ he said. ‘Was I not what you were expecting?’

  This was my chance to be the bigger woman (already a given) and confess that the fact that he was a little shorter than me had just caught me off guard. I mean, it can’t be like he doesn’t know he’s short, right? Instead I took the coward’s way out and totally blocked him.

  ‘I was just a bit nervous,’ I said. ‘I don’t go on many dates and it’s always a bit scary meeting someone new.’

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘and that’s totally understandable. I hope you don’t feel nervous any more?’