Playgroups and Prosecco

by Jo Middleton

Now imagine those breasts attached to me while I am on all fours.

  I may never have sex again.

  Sunday 14 October

  I don’t want to go to work tomorrow. Don’t make me. Gah.

  Monday 15 October

  Made twenty-five cups of coffee, wrote up three obituaries, collated scores for nineteen skittles matches, uploaded seven stories to Dorset Echo website, including one about a ‘galloping granny’ reunited with her beloved horse.

  It seems to me that the only training you really need to be a reporter at a local paper is the ability to find an adjective that begins with the same letter as the subject of your headline.

  Most exciting story of the day was that of a Dorset woman who has had dead fish dumped on her doorstep as part of a ‘ongoing vendetta’, which I feel probably makes it sound a bit more Godfather than it actually is.

  Come back, Steve, all is forgiven.

  Tuesday 16 October

  Couldn’t take any more at work today so this afternoon I mentioned to Leon, casually, that I noticed my annual leave for next week hadn’t been added to the diary and should I pop it in?

  He looked puzzled.

  ‘What annual leave?’ he said.

  I tried to look worried and shocked, like we had only been speaking about it yesterday and how could he have forgotten.

  ‘My family holiday to Portugal?’ I said. ‘I told you about it at my interview and you said it wouldn’t be a problem. You must remember because we chatted about your holiday last year to the same area?’

  This was a total lie, but I’d heard him talking to one of the girls from advertising a couple of weeks ago about having been to the Lisbon for his honeymoon. He need never know we were going to the Algarve.

  He really was confused then. Clearly, he couldn’t remember it at all, because it never happened, but my fact about his honeymoon had added gravitas and I was doing my best to make the same expression that Flo does when she ‘honestly swears’ she did tell me she needed £19 and a double packed lunch for a school trip to the Natural History Museum.

  Holiday is in the diary. I feel a bit bad about it, but honestly, no one is going to die or anything, are they? Someone else might have to write up the local football match results – not exactly the end of the world.

  Interesting conversation on Tinder this evening with a thirty-two-year-old who claims to have spent eight years in ‘one of the world’s most notorious gangs’ but now he’s apparently looking into becoming a writer so that he can write about the story of his life, including how he was ‘framed’ for burning down a secure mental health unit. He did say, ‘I guess I’d have to change names and stuff’, so good to see he has thought it through.

  Obviously I was terrified, but also interested to see exactly how many gang secrets he’d be prepared to offer up to a stranger on the internet.

  He wasn’t prepared to let on who might have framed him for the fire, but he did think it might have had something to do with him setting fire to the base of a notorious motorcycle gang. Then he teased me by hinting at an ‘incident in the Portrait Gallery’ and referred to himself as ‘Yorkshire’s most prolific squatter’, which is certainly a claim to fame.

  ‘I shouldn’t be giving away my best stories on Tinder, though,’ he wrote at one point, ‘they’re meant to be for getting laid!’

  I know I save the all of my best squatting/arson anecdotes for when I really want to seduce someone.

  When he started telling me about all the books he’d read recently in prison, I chickened out and unmatched me before he found out where I lived and set fire to my house.

  Thursday 18 October

  I told Sierra and Lou at Chapter One parent group today that I wouldn’t be able to make next week’s session as I was going on a villa holiday to Portugal with my ex-husband.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Sierra, ‘are you rekindling?’

  ‘Oh, how romantic!’ said Lou, ‘I’m so pleased! That whole thing with the summer holiday box of treats was adorable. All I got from David over the summer holidays was a carrier bag full of the boys’ clothes that he had got wet in the sea and not bothered to wash.’

  I told them, much to Lou’s disappointment, that I wasn’t planning any kind of rekindling, (although the summer holiday box really was lovely), but that we were just hoping to get a bit of closure on the separation and hopefully go back to being friends.

  ‘It’s ever so brave,’ said Lou.

  ‘Is the villa near a bus stop in case it all goes tits up?’ asked Sierra.

  Friday 19 October

  I got caught putting Jess’s latest batch of paintings from nursery in the recycling this morning. She was beside herself with grief, of course, those particular paintings being her most special paintings ever, painted just for me etc., etc.

  I took them out and told her that I was very sorry and that I would make sure to put them instead into the special box of memories that I keep all of her paintings in. Jess asked if she could look at the box, but I said no, it was in the attic to keep it extra safe and that she was too small to go up there. Then I gave her some chocolate buttons to distract her while I went and put the paintings into the main recycling bin outside.

  I do actually have a box under my bed, but it probably doesn’t have the things in that Jess would want me to keep. I have the Babygros they both came home from hospital in, and a little silver pot full of Flo’s baby teeth which, on reflection, might be a bit gruesome. Not sure if other parents keep those? I have a lot hand and foot prints from them both on various birthdays, the first of which I did for each of them a few days after they were born, and I’ve saved quite a lot of the notes that Flo has written me over the years too, where she tells me how pleased she is that I am her mummy and how I smell nicer than roses and toasted cheese sandwiches. Sometimes I get the box out and read them all.

  Saturday 20 October – Villa Holiday Week

  Ian is going to be here in a minute to pick us up. I’ve decided not to take my diary, just in case – not that I think for a minute that Ian would read it even if he found it, but it hardly ever leaves the house and I think I’d just feel safer.

  I hope this holiday is the right thing. Is it ridiculous to go on a family holiday with your ex-husband? I don’t want it to be. I miss so much having him to talk to, and it would be amazing if we could get back even half of what we had.

  Saturday 27 October

  It’s 3 a.m. and we are finally home after a hideous airport delay but I can’t sleep and I wanted to write some things down while they were fresh in my mind.

  Basically, it’s all good. Things started off a bit awkwardly, as you might expect, and there was a lot of ‘no, honestly, you take the window seat, I really don’t mind,’ and weird shuffling around each other because we were scared to make physical contact. Fortunately, Jess made enough fuss on the plane to mean we wouldn’t have had time to speak directly to each other, even if we had wanted to, so that was a good icebreaker. She sat in the middle seat between us, and Flo sat across the aisle, opposite Ian.

  (She did not make a fuss at all, obviously – she had her phone, Heat magazine and a family-size bag of Wispa bites.)

  We arrived, got our bags, stood about in the airport for a bit, looking lost – all the usual tourist things – and then Ian found the car-hire desk and we set off. There was one ‘why is that lady so fat, Mummy?’ moment in the airport, but I hoped that the language barrier might save us from at least some of the embarrassing situations Jess was likely to put us in.

  I’m not going to bore myself with a day-by-day account of the holiday, I just wanted to write a little bit about our first evening. Ian had gone out to a supermarket after he’d dropped us off at the villa, and brought back holiday supplies – chiefly pasta, nectarines and wine. (What is it about being abroad that makes you eat nectarines?) He also brought me a packet of European lemon-and-lime flavour Jaffa Cakes. When you’re in your late thirties and have two children, that’s the kind of rock-and-roll
level you reach with holiday experimentation.

  I made dinner for us all and then Ian did bedtimes while I took my wine out on to the terrace and tried to make the villa Wi-Fi work. I’m not saying I can’t go for a week without looking at Instagram, but, well, I don’t want to, and I’m a grown-up, so I get to choose.

  Once Jess was asleep and Flo was in her room reading, Ian brought the rest of the wine outside and sat down on the lounger next to me. He’d put on a jumper and handed me a blanket that he’d brought from his bedroom.

  We sat for a while, lit by fairy lights, listening to the night-time noises.

  Eventually, Ian sat up in his lounger and turned to face me. ‘I’m really pleased you agreed to come,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’m pleased you asked me,’ I said, not sitting up, but turning over on my side towards him, pulling the blanket up under my chin. ‘You should have seen my boss’s face, though – he looked genuinely concerned, like he must be having memory blackouts.’

  ‘I know some people are going to think it’s a bit weird,’ he went on, ‘but we’ve always been such good friends, so comfortable picking up where we left off, even when we’ve not seen each other for a long time. I thought maybe we could try to pretend it was just like that? Like we’ve both been away and now we’re back, and we can go back to how we were before?’

  ‘I’d like that,’ I said.

  He lay back in the lounger and I rolled back to gaze at the sky.

  When we went to bed later that night, (separately, diary, don’t get any ideas), I fell asleep almost instantly and had wonderful dreams about opening an ice-cream parlour in the south of France.

  The main scandal of the holiday was the second night. We’d had a repeat of the ‘dinner, kids in bed, wine on the terrace’ thing and Ian said he had something he wanted to talk to me about. I felt suddenly very awkward – what if in Ian’s mind this holiday was a rekindling? The first night had been so nice, and I was just starting to feel so relaxed about everything, I really didn’t want him making any declarations.

  Turned out I needn’t have worried – he had wanted to tell me that he was dating! I know, right? And, get this, it’s all thanks to me! Apparently, after I sent him that message when he was in New York about Macy’s mum having a crush, he started making an effort to chat to her more at nursery pick-up on Wednesdays and then, before Jess stopped for the summer holidays, Ian asked her out! Macy’s mum, who it turns out is called Denise, said yes, and Bob’s your uncle.

  He says it’s very early days and they are only seeing each other once a week or so, when Macy and her brother go to their dad and Ian is free, but honestly, he seemed really happy when he was talking about her. What’s even better (selfishly), is that I actually felt really happy about it, too. I definitely don’t think I would have done six months ago – but I don’t know; there was something about his face and the way his eyes lit up when he was telling me about her, and I couldn’t help but be pleased for him.

  I did ask how Denise felt about me coming on holiday with them, but he said they had talked about it before he asked me and that she was totally fine with it, that she was really pleased for the girls’ sakes that Ian and I wanted to get things back on track and be amicable about everything.

  So a bit of a landmark week, really. Ian is moving on and I surprised myself by feeling OK about it. For all the dates I’ve been on this year, I think it has taken me until now to really feel like I could do it seriously. Not that I’ve been messing anyone around, just that I guess I’ve always felt a bit like I’m holding something back?

  Monday 29 October – back to school

  Back to work. Don’t want to talk about it.

  Wednesday 31 October

  Jess wanted me to go trick-or-treating with her, so Ian fed the girls at his house and then brought them home again when I was back from work. I was totally on board with this as it meant Jess arrived already kitted out in her spooky witch costume, complete with plastic pumpkin basket for collecting treats.

  When I opened the door to them I screamed and covered my face with my hands. ‘No!’ I wailed. ‘Please no! Don’t hurt me!’

  Jess laughed. ‘Mummy it’s me!’ She took off her crooked witch nose to prove it.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ I said, ‘so it is! You scared me!’ She looked pleased with herself. ‘It’s a great costume!’

  ‘Asda,’ whispered Ian behind his hand. I nodded approvingly.

  Flo, on the other hand, looked like she was ready for a shift at a strip club. She had on a black mini dress and ripped black fishnets and her hair was backcombed at peculiar angles.

  ‘Wow,’ I said, not really sure what else I could say.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, Mum,’ she said, pushing past me to go upstairs, ‘it’s not finished yet.’ I was relieved. Perhaps she was going to put on a nice pair of tracksuit bottoms or something? ‘I haven’t done my make-up yet – I forgot to take my false eyelashes to Dad’s.’

  And this, apparently, is modern Halloween.

  When I was small, Halloween consisted of cutting three holes in a bin bag – one for your head and two for your arms. If I was lucky I got to paint a few stars and a moon shape on the bin liner with white poster paint or Tippex. My mum would put a few apples in a washing-up bowl for me to bob and then, with my fringe still wet I’d knock on the neighbour’s door and they’d give me a packet of Chewits. I had a perfectly nice time. No one spent any money and no one had to dress up as a prostitute.

  I’m not sure supermarkets even sold clothes back then. There certainly wasn’t an aisle dedicated to seasonal dressing up. Christmas was just the same. If you were given the role of shepherd in the nativity, you wore a tea towel on your head, tied in place with the cord from your dad’s dressing gown. If you were a king then you might have a cape made of an old piece of crushed velvet from the back of your nan’s sofa.

  We FaceTimed Mum and Dad for Jess to show them her outfit and I reminded Mum about the shepherd in one of my school nativities who had worn a souvenir Corfu tea towel.

  ‘Ooh yes,’ said Mum, ‘that was Scott Howard, wasn’t it? His mum thought she was really something special with all those fancy holidays they went on. As if a shepherd would have been to Corfu.’

  Flo went off to meet her friends, most likely on a street corner, and Ian and I took Jess a couple of streets away where they go in for Halloween in a big way. Pretty much every other house had some kind of corpse dangling outside the front door and one had a talking tombstone that worked on a sensor. Jess had a bit of a lip wobble when one man answered the door dressed as Dracula and asked to suck her blood, but even I was a little taken aback, so I can’t say I blamed her for that.

  It wasn’t long before her pumpkin basket was full of mini bags of Haribo and we were allowed to go home. (Points to Ian for choosing a particularly small pumpkin.) Once they’d left and I was on my own I poured a glass of red wine (to look like blood) and got myself comfy with the remote control.

  Only one lot of trick or treaters caught me out before I remembered to switch off all the lights at the front of the house. I was totally unprepared, of course, so I gave them each an apple. I fully expect the house to be egged and floured by the time I wake up.

  (Question: is egg and flour a thing any more or do children nowadays prefer cyberbullying? I can see the appeal – cheaper, quicker, don’t have to bother to go to the Spar, etc.)

  Thursday 1 November

  I told all the mums at Chapter One parent group about my new book group this afternoon. Quite a few of them said they would come along, especially when I told them that they didn’t actually need to read anything before the first meeting. One mum, Sadie, admitted that all she’s read since her daughter was born two years ago is tweets, Mumsnet threads and the occasional copy of Woman’s Own magazine.

  Lou brought some home-made oatmeal and raisin cookies. (I wonder if this is why the new group is so popular?) They were amazing, even without any chocolate chips in.

 
; ‘You should be on Instagram, Lou,’ I told her. ‘You could take gorgeous pictures of all of these things and become an internet sensation. You could be the Zoella of healthy snacks.’ Lou looked doubtful. ‘Honestly,’ I said, ‘you could be like @simple_dorset_life. Have you heard of her? You should follow her – she’s my go-to when I need some aspirational content to envy. Only she doesn’t seem to have posted anything recently …’

  ‘I’m not sure I really have the time for Instagram,’ said Lou, looking over her shoulder. ‘I think Edward needs me anyway, so …’ and she scuttled off before I could tell her more about my other social media obsessions. Edward seemed to be playing happily, so that was a bit weird.

  Sunday 4 November

  Jess refused to walk to Tesco Express today, even though it’s only fifteen minutes away. I could have driven, but when I checked the step-counter on my phone this morning it said I’d done 1,392 steps altogether in the last two days, which seemed a tad on the low side. Plus we only needed things for packed lunches tomorrow, so I couldn’t justify it on the grounds of ‘things I needed to carry’ either.

  Instead, I dug around in the boot of the car under all the carrier bags that I always forget to actually take into the supermarket with me and found the buggy, which we haven’t used in ages and I’ve half been meaning to take to a charity shop. I thought she’d think it was a treat, which she did for about the first five minutes, but then she decided that what she really wanted was to definitely not be in the buggy at all.

  ‘Can we go home now?’ she asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said, ‘we’re going to the shops first.’

  ‘But I want to go home,’ she whined. ‘I don’t like it in the buggy, it’s too scratchy.’