by Gill Sims
And then after midnight, after all the counting down and getting pawed by sweaty men under the guise of wishing you ‘Happy New Year’, there is just nothing, except a sense of disillusionment and despair, as the last glowing sparkles of December are brutally extinguished and all you have looming ahead of you is the dark void of January and another year in which you will probably fail to become a proper grown-up.
Why didn’t I see sense and reason (that is a rhetorical question, obviously, because the answer, as it so often is, is ‘drink’) and realise that spending NYE watching Jools’ Annual Hootenanny wasn’t so bad actually, as you get to see random celebrities trying to pretend they are not actually being filmed in August, all corralled in a studio together, where they too are forced to have the ‘best time ever’. Why did I think this was a good idea?
I am frantically cleaning and cooking and assembling canapés in between looking at Facebook, where everybody I know ever is posting statuses like ‘Looking forward to a fabulous NYE party at Ellen’s!’; ‘Can’t wait to see New Year in with Ellen and the gang!’; ‘Cheeky fizz before Ellen’s party!’; ‘Getting glammed up for Ellen’s party, Happy New Year in advance everyone!’
I HATE THEM ALL! I am not having ‘cheeky fizz’ or getting ‘glammed up’ because I am panic hoovering and frenziedly assembling Caesar fucking salads on sticks and trying not to burn the profiteroles and this is all my horrible friends’ fault for accepting my stupid invitation in the first place and Simon’s fault for letting me have a party, and if he offers one more time to do something stupid and selfish like pour me a glass of wine or run me a bath (the bath is still dead to me anyway, after the thought of what horrors might have happened in it over Christmas), I will beat him to death with a honey-and-mustard-glazed mini cocktail sausage.
Breathe. Breathe. I can do this. These people are my friends, except for the ones I hate that I only invited to show off what a calm, capable and welcoming hostess I am. And the ones I invited because we went to their party and so we ‘owe’ them. And the ones I just invited because I was pissed and they seemed less annoying than usual. It’ll be fine. MOST of these people are my friends.
At least the children are sleeping over at Sam’s house with his babysitter, so they will not appear halfway through my elegant and sophisticated cocktail party demanding that the guests guess who farted – Peter or the dog? – and making kind offers such as ‘I’ll give you a clue, mine are more cabbagey and his are more meaty!’
Cocktails! Bugger. Has Simon started making the cocktails yet? Simon’s cocktails are my secret weapon. He is very good at making extremely strong cocktails that somehow just taste like fruit juice, so I will get everyone hammered as soon as they arrive and it will all be fine, they will not care about anything else and will probably wake up tomorrow morning with little recollection of the evening, so I will easily be able to convince everyone that I am the party hostess of the century. Hurrah! It will be fine. Still hate those smug bastards tagging me on Facebook, though.
Arrrghhhh! People are arriving already!
JANUARY
Friday, 1 January – New Year’s Day
Oh God, my head. Oh Jesus, what happened? Oh fuck. Sam was there, Sam and Hannah came early to help me finish getting everything ready. We had a couple of cocktails …
Everyone else arrived and I was utterly charming – enthusiastic and witty and welcoming. I introduced people to each other and encouraged them to circulate. Did I actually shout ‘FOR FUCK’S SAKE, CIRCULATE, YOU MISERABLE BASTARDS!’ at everyone? I might’ve. Well, they probably thought I was being ironic and amusing.
Food. I did feed people, didn’t I? I seem to have woken up clutching a cocktail sausage roll in one hand. Yes, I fed people. I have a vague recollection of ranting to a husband of one of the school mummies who had turned out to be a GP about why everyone is gluten-free now, while ramming mini Scotch eggs in my mouth and trying to force-feed them to him.
Music? Yes, we had music. And dancing! At least I had dancing. I insisted the floor was cleared while I performed Kate Bush’s dance from ‘Wuthering Heights’. I sang along, too. I do remember being surprised by the shocked silence at the end instead of the rapturous applause I had expected for my virtuoso performance. Shit.
Actually, double shit, where am I? Why am I in the spare room? Oh God, was I so awful that Simon is now divorcing me? Maybe I did my ‘Patricia the Stripper’ routine again. Actually, that rings a bell. I did do Patricia the Stripper, but I wasn’t alone. Who else did it with me? Fucking hell, it was Fiona Montague! I feel a bit better now, if Fiona Montague was pissed enough to be doing Patricia the Stripper, I wasn’t the only one there being a ‘bit much’! And ‘Patricia the Stripper’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ are pretty much par for the course as my party pieces. Just as long as I didn’t try to do anything really awful, like pinch TV Alicia’s scarves for the Dance of the Seven Veils or anything.
I wonder if I text Simon he would bring me a cup of tea? I had to eat the sausage roll, to keep my strength up. I would literally give almost anything in the world for a bacon sandwich right now.
Saturday, 2 January
Oh dear. It appears I was a ‘bit much’. I forced Fiona Montague to take part in the Patricia the Stripper dance, although Simon says she seemed to rather enjoy it once she got going, and has, I quote, ‘quite a hip action’. After that, apparently I decided profiterole juggling was going to be a new Olympic sport and attempted to give a demonstration. When Simon remonstrated with me, I took a huff and went to bed in a strop, in the spare room, to spite him. No one appeared to notice my absence, though, as everyone thought I was just in another room.
More excitingly, Alison Evans brought her rather lush brother Mark along, and he went home with the phone number of none other than young Sam, and he has already called and they are going on a date.
It is fairly obvious that it has been some time since Sam has been on a date, as he has suddenly lost all his urban cool and turned into a wittering, love-struck teenage girl. He has already sent Hannah and me photos of at least ten different shirts, demanding our opinions, and with accompanying worries about each one: ‘The blue one really brings out my eyes, but the green one shows off my pecs, but I don’t want to show them off too much, I don’t want him to think I’m some ‘roid raging meat head, but then I don’t want to look easy either, and I like the tartan one, but is it too pretentious, because I don’t want to look like a hipster wanker, so I think I’ll go for the blue. I’m going to wear the blue. Unless you think I should wear the green? Maybe I should buy a new shirt? Do you think it will be really obvious it’s a new shirt? I don’t want to seem desperate. I could say I got it for Christmas. Who gave me it? Not my mum, obviously! Okay, one of you gave me a shirt for Christmas, if you see him, remember that. Remember to tell Mark you gave me a nice shirt, then I will look like I have tasteful friends who like me enough to buy me expensive presents. Yes! Nailed it.’
What does he mean it will ‘look like’ he has tasteful friends? He does have tasteful friends; we are very tasteful – apart from the sideboard, which could happen to anyone.
Besides trying to soothe Sam’s obsessive shirt worries (ooh, I wonder if he’s had a dick pic yet and that’s why he’s in such a tizz? No, I digress), now my hangover has subsided, I have come up with a list of excellent and improving New Year’s resolutions, which I am definitely going to stick to this year. I shall be forty in a few short months and I need to learn to be a grown-up. Forty-year-olds do not climb atop their rickety pianos and perform lewd dance routines to ‘Patricia the Stripper’ (even though it is actually quite challenging to dance on an upright piano). Forty-year-olds are Proper People. With that in mind, this year I shall:
Learn French. Proper French, with a French accent, enabling me to converse eloquently, beyond my current limits of ‘Je voudrais aller le discotheque’. I am thirty-nine; that is too old to tell people that I like to go to the discotheque in any language.
I w
ill also read interesting novels in the original French, perhaps while reclining upon a chaise longue. Madame Bovary was a good French book, and also very saucy. Actually, have I read Madame Bovary, or did I just watch the rude TV series where people kept shagging in a forest? I will read Madame Bovary, in French. Or at least in English.
I will also force the children to learn French with me, and once a week we will have French Night, like at the Chalet School, where we only speak to each other in French, saying things like ‘Voulez vous passez le petit pois, s’il vous plait?’ On these nights, I will be sure to invite the children of the Coven for tea, so they go home and report how cosmopolitan and intelligent we are, and the Coven mummies will feel a bit inadequate, despite their perfect Pinterest boards and their #soblessed Instagram feeds. Ha!
Get a different job. I do get to doss about a lot at work, but the actual job part of it is very dull. Simon says all jobs are dull and I’m lucky to have a job I can fit around the children, but I would like to do something exciting and fun that challenges me creatively.
Simon says, ‘Wouldn’t we all, my love, please stop being such a pretentious twat,’ but it’s all right for him, titting about being an architect, leaving his genius behind him for posterity, or at least a few years, though he seems unconvinced by his great legacy of office conversions and blocks of city centre flats.
Along with being a clever and creative app developer, I am thinking of becoming a social media entrepreneur. I have no idea what this means, but I keep reading about people who claim it as their job description. Perhaps the first part of the resolution should actually be ‘find out what a social media entrepreneur is’?
I am also going to properly pursue promoting my app and making some money out of it. I was pleased to see this morning that 100 people have now bought it, which means I have pretty much broken even. Pure profit from here on in! Between that and the social media entrepreneurship, I shall be a millionaire soon.
Drink less wine. Instead of buying a trolley load of anything on special offer, I shall visit quirky independent wine merchants and buy one or two bottles of high-quality wine, which I shall sip on reflectively, savouring each delicious mouthful.
It will probably be French wine, to reflect my newfound sophistication and elegance. Anyway, I will be too busy with learning French and becoming an app mogul/social media entrepreneur to get shit-faced on supermarket Pinot Grigio anymore. I simply will not have the time to spend my evenings watching EastEnders; dicking about on Facebook and necking cheap wine in a vain attempt to dull the ringing in my ears from the incessant witterings of the children and also to silence the nagging fear that everybody else seems to have a much better life than me. Anyway, the children will not be wittering anymore, they shall be uttering cultured observations on life, in French.
Be nicer to Simon. We shall schedule time for each other and go on Date Nights, where we shall discuss art and politics and not whether it was him or one of the children who left a big poo in the lavatory and did not flush it.
We shall walk hand in hand by moonlit rivers and remember that we are soulmates. I will not call him an annoying twat or a fuckwit (to his face anyway) and I will make more of an effort and wear matching underwear often enough that he no longer assumes that because for once I am wearing a bra and pants in vaguely the same colour, he must be ‘in there’. I shall appreciate all the many nice, kind and generous things he does for the children and me, and not just focus on the annoying things. I will not sulk when we have a row and make him be the first one to apologise, even when I’m in the wrong. Anyway, with my new mature and responsible approach to our relationship, we probably won’t even have rows anymore. Perhaps we shall have ‘family meetings’ instead, where we take it in turns to air our small dissatisfactions in an adult way without apportioning blame and work together to find resolutions, rather than hurling the biscuit tin at his head because he asked me once again if there ‘was a reason’ why the oven was on, when any blithering idiot could see that the oven was on to COOK HIS BLOODY DINNER!
Politics. I shall learn all about this. Not only British politics, but world politics.
I will understand the American political system; I will know the difference between the French Prime Minister and President; I will find out who is in charge of Spain (do they still have a king? Or is that Portugal?).
I will also look up where is Spain and where is Portugal, so I know where people are going on holiday. There will be no repeat of the unfortunate time that I thought Cologne was in France (which is, frankly, an easy mistake to make. Why would you have ‘eau de cologne’ if Cologne is in Germany? Why wouldn’t it be called something German?).
Not only will I learn who is in the Cabinet, I will also know who is in the Shadow Cabinet. I will stop reading the Mail Online, especially the Sidebar of Shame, and I will read the Guardian and the New Statesman. I will become a caring, compassionate and informed person.
TV. BBC2 and BBC4 only. Also, Sky Arts.
There will be no more binge-watching EastEnders. Game of Thrones is probably okay because I saw somewhere that there are a lot of political analogies, so I could still watch that as part of my politics resolution – but only for the analogies and not for the dragons and the shagging and my weird fixation with Jaqen H’ghar.
I will also strictly limit the children’s screentime. By which I mean actually limit it and not pretend not to know they are still watching Netflix in their rooms after I’ve made them turn the TV off. It will be CBBC only for them, especially Newsround.
Children. I will do interesting and educational activities with them, and I will not shout at them or tell them they are stupid, EVEN when they glue their hands to the table during the interesting and educational activities.
I will also read up on better ways to resolve conflict between them when they try to kill each other, instead of just howling ‘For the love of God, will you stop fucking fighting! I don’t CARE who started it, just bloody stop it NOW!’
I will listen to their thoughts and feelings and emotions that led up to them trying to twat each other around the head with an iPad and I will quietly explain to them why that is not acceptable behaviour, while helping them to explore different ways to express their frustrations. Possibly through the medium of interpretive dance.
Money. I will be sensible about money. I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that credit cards are free money. I will log on each week to our accounts and keep a note of how much we are spending, and I will attempt to reduce our debts. I will do this quite soon, because I screwed up the courage earlier to look at the credit card account and then had to immediately shut it down in horror, and then had to open it up to look again, because I was hoping it must’ve been a mistake, we couldn’t have spent that much over Christmas? But it appeared we had. I will also tell Simon about this very, very soon and we will deal with it like responsible and mature adults.
What else? Oh yes, get thin, obviously. That’s on pretty much every woman’s resolution list, isn’t it? Get thin, and get fit. Ideally, I will get thin enough that people will talk about me behind my back and say things like, ‘I think she’s actually a bit too thin now’, but I would settle for just thinner generally.
I have just read over all my resolutions. They are very good resolutions but they are possibly going to turn me into the smuggest, most annoying twat of all time. Anyway, it is too late to start today, and there still some wine left. It is best I finish up the bargain wine before I start on the grown-up wine resolution, because the children keep waving posters from school in my face about reducing wastage, which is what I will be doing by drinking the wine.
I will finish up the cheap Chardonnay and just have a little stalk on Facebook, but only of the more worthy people who share all the Guardian articles, to introduce me to my new world of informed political stances.
I wonder what ‘Fuck My Life’ is in French?
Wednesday, 13 January
Simon has seen the cred
it card bill. It was inevitable really, in this day and age, it’s not like Mum used to be able to hide the bills from Dad by shoving them under the mattress, though he would always find them, too, and then there would be a row much along the lines of the one Simon and I just had.
It was fairly standard actually. The size of the bill and amount of money spent were entirely my fault, because I was the one who had bought most of the stuff. Simon conveniently ignored the fact that this was because I had done all the food shopping and bought all the presents, most of them for his wretched family and his sexually incontinent sister’s ever-increasing tribe of unwashed brats. Describing Louisa and her family like that was possibly a mistake, as Simon is allowed to criticise his sister, but I am not, unless he has opened the proceedings.
Finally Simon roared, ‘For fuck’s sake, Ellen, how are we ever going to get ourselves on a sound financial footing if you keep spending money like this? I am working flat out to provide for you and you just fritter money away.’
There were so many things I could’ve said to this. Like how I wasn’t the one who’d had five years of student loans to pay off after university. Like how when we first graduated, and indeed for some time after we got married, I had actually earned considerably more than him. Like how the only reason I work part-time now is to look after his children and if I am frittering money away, what the fuck is he doing with all his sodding gadgets and power tools that he never actually uses?
I didn’t, though. I tried to be positive. I said, ‘It’s not that bad, Simon. We just need to economise for a bit, that’s all. And maybe my app will –’