The Unmumsy Mum Diary

by The Unmumsy Mum

  Firstly, I should say that it wasn’t the willies. OK, one of them shocked me a little bit (it was basically another leg), but that was all part of the giggles. That was what we went for. I’ve seen Magic Mike, and I certainly wasn’t feeling prudish about the gyrating or the porno-pictures on the walls of the ‘club’, because it’s actually not the first time I’ve been inside such a club (I’ll save that story for my next book: All the Crazy Shit I Did When I was Pissed on Work Courses). No, the grinding, hip-pumping and wanger-dangling was all par for the course. All good fun.

  It was what was going on around us in the crowd that I’m not sure I’ll ever get over. I was more than prepared for a raucous audience, probably hen-party heavy, all screaming and whooping and generally having a good time. I wasn’t prepared for the gaggle of women who turned up in ‘sexy uniform’ costumes and chanted, ‘Cock! Cock! Cock!’ at the oily men on stage. I wasn’t prepared to step over puddles of sick on the floor of the toilet before the ‘act’ had even started. I wasn’t prepared for a ‘naughty nurse’ to let a ‘silent but deadly’ go at the bar, leaving us standing in a farty mist.

  More than all of the above, I wasn’t prepared for sitting in close proximity to a woman who was wearing some kind of red, partially transparent negligee teamed with a pair of devil’s horns who drank a whole bottle of wine through a straw – and whose ‘dress’ hemline gradually got higher as the entertainment unfolded. Now, I am all for women feeling empowered to wear whatever the hell they want regardless of their dress size but the lady in question was obviously not wearing the right size because I could see two-thirds of her fanny every time she started stomping along with the cock-chanting.

  Never before in my life have I felt so posh. It was like all of one year’s Jeremy Kyle Show guests had been bussed in for a night out. I know that makes me sound snobby, but on this occasion I don’t feel the need to be apologetic for that, because I’m still having flashbacks about the sozzled she-devil and her visible vulva.

  The absolute best thing about the evening was the time the four of us spent getting ready at the hotel before our night out. The music was on, the hair straighteners were out, and just for a moment it reminded me of the old days, though, unsurprisingly, as four mums with nine children between us, there were a fair few phone calls home and chats about sibling rivalry/husbands/fussy eating/potty training.

  I think the evening with the girls has helped me to realise that it is still possible to do these things without there being any conflict with my ‘mum life’ and there is no need to do anything drastic (tattoo/piercing/convertible-buying/adultery) as the big 3-0 approaches. To be honest, after the excitement of this weekend, I reckon I’ve nipped the ‘I’m getting old and boring’ crisis in the bud before it’s really started.

  Give me tea and telly and Rightmove browsing any day.

  Thursday 3rd

  Yesterday evening, I got a call asking if I would be available to go on ITV’s This Morning to talk about parental guilt – and they wanted me live in the studio today. After much faffing around on the phone in my bedroom (if I got a super-early train, could I make it there on time? What the hell should one wear for a sofa date with Phillip and Holly?!), I was all set for what felt like a pretty big moment.

  If truth be told, I was in two minds about it. Although the prospect of meeting the Silver Fox himself was an exciting one, I’m well aware I’m not a natural telly person – I’ve watched myself back on the handful of telly things I have been asked to do and, aside from the local news piece where I looked quite at home (because my kids were climbing on me and shouting ‘Pig-pig’ in my ear), I usually tend to look a bit strained, like I’m focusing so hard on ‘acting natural’ that the overall vibe achieved is more startled/constipated.

  So I was nervous. Desperately so. As I sat in the empty carriage of what appeared to be the earliest train in the world (there were only two of us on it), my body did what it always does when I’m anxious and started shivering. I stared out of the window, teeth chattering and hands shaking, as I turned the same thought over and over in my head: How the hell did I get here? When did I become someone who catches a train at the crack of dawn to go on the telly?

  I will forever find it baffling that I have such a healthy social media following for someone who isn’t a public figure or any kind of celebrity. I don’t even have the pull of nice clothes or particularly good eyebrows (mine are certainly not ‘on fleek’, as the youth say), and my home doesn’t look like a White Company advert. However, I have always told myself that, whatever the reason for people being interested in what I get up to, the fact remains that my bubble exists online.

  Yet I’ve started to realise that the bubble must have extended off line, too. Putting myself ‘out there’ on the internet doesn’t just involve me dicking around on my laptop in my pyjamas in front of Dinner Date any more. I am now being invited to do things in person. Maybe that shouldn’t feel weird. I have, after all, shared so much of myself online that I honestly don’t think I could have been any more ‘real’ without telling everybody when I’ve been for a poo. But it still feels odd to be making the transition to sharing that stuff with other people in the flesh. My five minutes on the This Morning sofa, therefore, felt like it would be a big moment, another step in this crazy journey (and, if you’ve read my first book, you’ll know I loathe all talk of personal ‘journeys’, but I have no idea what else to call it). So, as the train neared Paddington, I attempted to put on some make-up, filling in those less-than-on-fleek eyebrows with a pencil and doing the gormless, open-mouthed mascara application, and I gave myself a pep talk.

  It would be fine.

  It would be fun.

  What was the worst that could happen? Fainting would be pretty bad. As would doing the high-pitched laugh I tend to do when I get nervous. Or freezing when Phillip asks me a question. Or swearing. Or being sick. If I didn’t do any of these things, I would have done all right.

  By the time I arrived at the ITV studios I had managed to shake off the bulk of my nerves, the adrenaline had kicked in and I was ready. I really wish I could tell you that I then did my bit on air, Holly and Phil thought I was brilliant and that, actually, I may have found my calling in daytime TV sofa chat, but I’m afraid none of that happened.

  The sofa didn’t even happen.

  After finding my way to the green room (where I hoped I would rub shoulders with Rylan or a celebrity chef), I was informed that there had been a change to the schedule and, unfortunately, there just wouldn’t be time for the parenting segment. At all. It had been bumped. I couldn’t think of anything that would have been appropriate to say at that point so I settled on a simple, disappointed, ‘Oh dear.’

  I should say it wasn’t completely unexpected – I have been bumped off TV schedules before at short notice so I know it’s how these things work. The team were also super-apologetic, and I didn’t feel like I wanted to snarl at anyone because it was nobody’s fault. But I had got up at 4 a.m. and spent two hours shaking on a train before spending a further forty minutes in a cab, and now I was in the This Morning bloody building, within sniffing distance of Phil and Holly. I had talked myself down from bailing/pretending I was ill, this was MY MOMENT. But it wasn’t to be.

  In the end, I filmed a sequence of very short videos for their social media content (turns out the online world is where I still live, after all) and got a cab back to Paddington, where I waited for a delayed train home to Devon, consoling myself with a ‘sharing’ bag of crisps and some Fanta. It has been a very strange, kind-of-exciting-but-ultimately-pointless day. Another time, perhaps.

  Saturday 5th

  How on earth are we, as parents, supposed to stop our children from saying rude things all the time? Although we’ve tried to ‘just ignore it’ for months (as internet advice suggests), Jude has become even more of a nightmare than ever and I am starting to get properly concerned. At times it’s funny, and James and I have on more than one occasion found ourselves in stitche
s when he answers ‘bum-bum’ to everything that’s asked of him, but I fear it’s getting out of hand. We’re at serious risk of looking like crap parents here.

  When it became clear that ‘just ignoring it’ wasn’t working, I trialled the use of a sharp, ‘No, Jude. We don’t say [insert whatever rude word he has become attached to], and if you do it again, Mummy will put you on the time-out step.’ But he couldn’t give less of a shit about my warnings and actually quite likes being sent to Coventry while he’s on the step, so what the hell is Plan C?

  At least I now have a better idea of where he’s picking it up from. For a long time, I had thought that perhaps he had cottoned on to which ones were the ‘funny’ words from our reactions to things he said and then chosen to repeat those words throughout the day, every day. But it turns out that Henry has been giving him lessons in the art of ‘adding a rude word to every sentence’ on the sly. I know this because when I got out of the shower this morning I could hear him in Jude’s room, coaching him through the cot bars. They were singing the Postman Pat theme tune, but instead of Pat having a black-and-white cat, he had a black-and-white poo-poo. And early in the morning, day wasn’t dawning, it was farting … you get the picture. I stormed into Jude’s room, still in my towel, and told them both off. While Jude has no regard for my attempts at discipline, Henry absolutely hates getting caught out so did his classic sheepish, wide-eyed ‘it wasn’t me’ face. I told him I was disappointed in him (the ultimate reprimand) before making him promise to stop teaching his little brother naughty habits and then explaining how failure to do so could result in me phoning Father Christmas (it’s now November, so the big FC card will henceforth be flogged to death). The problem we’ve got is that the damage is already done. It’s gone beyond silliness and become a habit: fifty per cent of Jude’s vocabulary is based around private parts and excrement. It’s annoying enough at home, but when we’re out and about it gets really embarrassing because people tend to have a good old gawp and then either laugh or tut.

  This afternoon, on the way back from picking up some lunch, I dragged both boys into a local charity shop to check out this week’s ornamental offering (because I like to pick up random charity-shop trinkets for my shelves. I do realise this activity pushes me firmly over the line into the old-before-my-time territory I was worrying about last month). The shop was virtually empty, and although that’s better for pram-manoeuvring, it’s so much worse when you have a potty-mouthed toddler – and Jude just seemed intent from the outset on making a scene.

  I asked him what he would like for his snack and he replied, ‘Fart-fart.’ Henry found this hilarious, while I had to pretend I hadn’t heard it as I stuck a packet of yoghurt raisins in Jude’s fist in a desperate attempt to silence him. Distracted by the vintage crockery, I failed to notice that he’d polished them off and was saying something barely audible, which had prompted the elderly lady pricing newly donated books at the counter to say, ‘What are you trying to tell me, dear?’ Before I could get to him, he replied, clear as day:

  ‘SMACK MY WILLY!’

  If looks could kill, we’d all be dead.

  I didn’t even find a bloody trinket.

  Tuesday 8th

  Periodically, I have a wobble about my unwillingness to do any adverts or sponsored posts on my blog and social media pages. This evening, as I sit replying ‘Thank you, but no thank you’ to the gazillionth request, an element of doubt has crept back in.

  The concept of being paid to promote brands or products has always presented me with a dilemma. On the one hand, it’s a phenomenal income opportunity, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t found the money on offer pretty tempting. But – and it’s a big but for me – it doesn’t feel right. That’s not to say I have a problem with people being paid to promote things. For many bloggers, it’s the revenue from sponsored posts that allows them to blog full time – and seeing as, by blogging, you are offering people a window into your life, it’s not at all unreasonable to want or need something in return. Many celebrities and bloggers whom I follow also do the #ad thing really well – it’s the norm on social media these days and people expect to see it.

  My gut feeling, though, has always been that being paid to endorse stuff feels out of kilter with what I ‘do’ online. For me, authenticity has always been about posting blogs or pictures when I feel like it – not when I’m contractually obliged to. Yet every now and again that raises the question: what exactly is the point of what I do? Where do I see it all going? Why am I sharing so much of my life online if I’m not getting paid to do so? I’m forever being asked in interviews or at book events about my ‘five-year plan’, and whenever I hear the question I pull a face like I have been asked for directions in Arabic. I don’t have a five-year plan. I don’t have a two-year plan. I don’t even have a plan for what I’m doing this weekend. Admittedly, I live in hope that my followers might buy my books – but I could give up writing books altogether and pose with prams and baby food without having to spend hour upon hour typing. The thing is, I enjoy the typing. I wouldn’t enjoy those #ad Instagram posts. Rightly or wrongly, I would feel like I had ‘sold out’. And perhaps one day I will sell out. If somebody offered me a million pounds to pose naked draped across a high chair with only the brand’s logo protecting my modesty, I would consider it – because then I could buy a house in the country with a roll-top bath and a long, sweeping drive and live happily ever after, pretending to be Ruth.

  For now, though, I think I’ll stick to doing what feels right. It hasn’t done me any harm so far.

  Thursday 17th

  For the past few months I have been speculating about how James might be finding his new work/life balance – and by ‘how he’s finding it’, I mean how he truly feels about doing the lion’s share of weekday parenting while the mother of his children works upstairs or heads to the library in town to escape the siren noises from Jude’s fleet of emergency vehicles. Aside from hearing the odd snippet here and there about his day, such as what happened when Jude did a leaky poo in the pram or what Henry told him at school pick-up, I haven’t actually taken the time to ask him how he’s getting on with the new routine. Perhaps I just can’t face hearing about how well he’s managing and how, consequently, I must be either wholly inept at parenting or just a massive mardy arse to have moaned almost continually for four years – but I don’t think it is that. I think it’s more that we just don’t get time for proper chats at the moment.

  So, a couple of weeks ago, I waited until I knew he was in a good mood and then I floated the idea of him writing a little something of his own for this book: his assessment of life on those midweek home days so far. I half expected him to tell me where to stick it, but this morning he surprised me by sending me an email (the modern marriage) that for once didn’t ask if I had picked up any toilet roll or whether I’d seen the house for sale in the road opposite ours; instead, it detailed his take on things, just as I had asked. So here it is …

  Mr Unmumsy’s Diary Takeover

  ‘You should stay at home and look after the kids,’ she said. ‘The time has come to shake things up a bit on the work front. I’ve got too much on and this isn’t working. Can you look into working fewer days, please?’

  Then she gave me The Look – a death stare, with some sighing. In fairness, she doesn’t dish out The Look that often – I think the last time she did was when I failed to return home from a night out that was only meant to be ‘a few drinks’. When she texted me at 1 a.m. and got no response, she took that as proof I had fallen in the canal. So I knew she was serious about us readjusting the division of childcare. She’d finally come out and said it: she wanted us to swap.

  I didn’t take much persuading.

  I have kept my nose to the grindstone in the civil service ever since I left sixth form fifteen years ago, and in all that time, I’ve never been particularly inspired by my job. I go to work to pay the bills. Sarah, on the other hand, is career-minded. Reducing my office hours
so she could increase her writing time was a logical step. And being at home for two days a week quite honestly sounded like the dream. I was looking forward to it.

  At weekends, we have always shared the roles of looking after the boys and the house fairly evenly. OK, there may be some things that each of us takes the lead on (I rarely cook, I refuse to empty the ‘lady bin’ in the bathroom and I have no idea what size clothes Henry and Jude wear, but then she’s never done the bloody meter readings in her life – she doesn’t even know where the meters are, and that’s not an exaggeration). Despite the odd domestic quibble, it’s generally a straight-down-the-middle split. She’s just naturally done more of the kids’ stuff because I have been at work. I therefore felt as though I knew what my ‘home’ days would hold in store and, if I’m honest, I was quietly confident that it would be easier than going out to work every day …