Why Mummy Drinks

by Gill Sims

  If we make it through check-in with only a dozen or so other passengers left limping in our wake after Peter and Jane have collided with their ankles, that is generally considered a success. While Simon was checking in, I also had to hold onto his hand luggage, because he was holding the passports and would shortly be in charge of the boarding passes as well, so he could not possibly be expected to hang on to his own nasty nylon backpack that he insists on taking on holiday.

  I, meanwhile, also had my own hand luggage, which weighed slightly more than my actual hold luggage, as part of my Operation Take All The Shoes On Holiday Without Being Charged For Excess Baggage.

  After check-in came security, which is always another personal challenge to Simon, as he frantically changes queues approximately every thirty seconds in an attempt to beat the system. I did suggest to him that now we are a bit more flush we should just fork out the extra for the Priority Security Lane, but he recoiled in horror, as apparently it is about the ‘principle’ of beating security and to simply pay for a fast-track lane would not be sporting.

  Having changed lanes at security seven times, as Simon repeatedly insisted we had to move to other queues which he thought were moving faster, we finally got through security about fifteen minutes after the people who had been behind us in the first queue and had stayed there. Now Simon embarked on the next stage of his Epic Quest, which was to Find The Gate. No matter that there were two and a half hours before our flight because he always insists on us arriving at the airport stupidly early, in case security is busy and his system-beating antics fail, he had to Find The Gate now! No matter that the gate had not been sodding well announced, He Is Man and so can guess where the gate is.

  Off he strode, encumbered only by his backpack, the precious passports and boarding passes tucked away in one of the Special Pockets of his Special Travelling Trousers, as we trailed behind, me lugging my bag full of All The Shoes, Peter and Jane’s cases slung around my necks as I had confiscated them after a nasty scene when they attempted a hit and run with an elderly lady, the children grasped in each hand lest they make a break for it and topple the giant towers of Toblerone in Duty Free (where obviously we were not allowed to stop, because Simon was Finding The Gate).

  Periodically he paused and looked behind him, tutting as we scurried to catch up, Peter and Jane being bodily dragged along by me now, as they usually try to make a break for freedom at some point in the airport.

  ‘Come on,’ he said bossily. ‘What’s keeping you?’

  When I hissed that I would stab him as he sleeps he looked at me in bafflement, for was he not Finding The Gate for me?

  Heaven forbid that I should have delayed the sacred search by, for example, stopping at a shop to buy water for the children, who had apparently developed a searing thirst and could not go another step without a drink, for that was a major impediment to his plan.

  When he finally arrived at The Gate, at least an hour before they had even thought about boarding, Simon had an air of achievement that suggested he had just trekked alone to the North Pole. He sat down as close to the door as he could, so that when they announced they would be boarding by seat numbers he could get in as many people’s way as possible, once we had had the traditional debate about whether or not we could make one of the children pass for under five and thus claim priority boarding.

  When I arrived several minutes after him, scarlet, sweating, breathless and furious, barely visible under the encumbrances of bags and children, he looked surprised to see me.

  ‘There you are!’ he said. ‘I thought you were right behind me, what happened to you?’

  By the time we got onto the aeroplane (including the fun of a bus to the aeroplane, my face pressed in a stranger’s armpit, as the children attempted to fall over and break their noses, while Simon stood at the other end of the bus and pretended not to know us), and we were finally in our seats, all I could snarl at Simon was, ‘I want a fucking divorce!’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked in surprise as I spat, ‘I hate you, you are a massive knobhead, I hate you.’

  I then demanded many tiny gin and tonics from the lady with the trolley to soothe my shattered nerves and finally started to calm down about ten minutes before landing, when more drama ensued as Simon tried to be the first off the aeroplane and then shouted a lot and turned the baggage claim into a piece of performance art, before having a fit at the queue for the car hire.

  Every single time I travel with Simon it is the same – I don’t know why I am even surprised any more. In an added twist this year, he didn’t realise the handbrake wasn’t on in the hire car, so when he put it in gear it started rolling backwards and almost killed me as I was trying to strap Peter in, which led to recriminations and accusations of attempted murder. I also missed a page of the very complicated instructions to the villa, which meant going round and round Corfu Town in circles until I found it while Simon shouted at me and I muttered at him under my breath to fuck off and die.

  When we finally arrived at the villa, it was perfection. High in the hills, looking out over the bay, sitting alone with nothing around it but olive groves. There were hammocks in the olive groves and a sparkling blue swimming pool.

  As we lugged the bags out of the car, including the several cases of wine we had stopped to buy on the way from the airport (which was another row, as I madly trolley dashed round the Greek supermarket), Peter and Jane saw the pool and immediately began clamouring to swim.

  I opened my mouth to say ‘NO! Later,’ and then thought, ‘We’re on holiday. There’s not actually any reason for them not to swim right now if they want to,’ so instead I asked Simon to go and keep an eye on them, as just because we are on holiday doesn’t mean they might not try to drown each other or somehow ‘forget’ how to swim, despite the small fortune squandered on many years of lessons for them.

  Monday, 18 April

  I love it here. Freed of the constraints of home – where everyone seems to be constantly rushing from one place to the next without ever having quite enough time to do any of the eleventy billion things that need to be done, and we’re always running just late enough to be fraught and shouting – we are all much nicer people.

  The children swim all day and barely bicker at all, though whether that is due to the sunshine, the physical exertion or the fact that I am not bellowing at them, I’m not sure. Simon looks ten years younger and for the first time in years I feel like my shoulders are not somewhere up around my ears.

  We get up in the morning and make coffee, and the children have even consented to eat fruit and yoghurt for breakfast, so surely that will ward off the scurvy for a few more months, and then we swim and throw stuff on the barbecue for lunch. Peter, having initially point-blank refused to try sardines finally had a mouthful, declared he loved them and ate ten of them, which was galling because I had planned to eat ten of them myself.

  The rest of the time we just potter about, and read. Well, I read, Simon listens to his iPod, Peter rearranges the essential Pokémon cards which he couldn’t possibly go on holiday without, and Jane looks for dead stuff, having been most delighted on our first day here to discover that there was a dead praying mantis lying on the terrace, being dismembered by ants.

  We keep making plans to go and do a bit of sight-seeing, but it is so relaxing here that the most we have managed to do is to totter to the little taverna down the road for drinks and ice creams. Periodically, all the wine somehow vanishes and I have to send Simon out into the world for more supplies, because I don’t do foreign driving.

  Simon has even managed not to slope off with his laptop on the basis that he ‘just needs to do some work’ or ‘answer a few emails’, which confirms my suspicions that when we are on holiday at Michael and Sylvia’s his claims of ‘work’ are just an excuse to get five minutes’ peace from his mother or his children, who tend to spend the holiday hyperactively trying to kill each other because Sylvia has stuffed them full of sweets, while insisting th
at French sweets are different and the excess of sugar can’t possibly be to blame for the children’s behaviour. It’s possible Simon also sneaks off to get some peace from listening to his wife complaining about his mother.

  Although there is Wi-Fi in the villa, I have even (temporarily) given up my Facebook addiction, apart from a few swanky photos to show off to everyone when we first arrived, which I rather regretted as it prompted Charlie to keep messaging me, once he knew I was contactable. It’s not that Charlie sends me anything inappropriate – it’s just jokey messages, silly photos and memes, but there are rather a lot of them. An awful lot of them. Anyway, I am not going to think about that. Charlie is a problem for real life, and I will deal with all of that when we get home. If we go home …

  I am formulating plans whereby we simply stay here and become the next Durrells. In truth, I have not completely given up the internet because I have been secretly looking at Greek property websites and glorious tumbledown villas, where I would drift around the stone-flagged floor, barefoot, quaffing simple local wine from a terracotta cup (I am not entirely certain how pleasant a terracotta cup would be to drink out of, but the idea of it fits pleasingly into my Vision), tossing the odd olive to the children, who would be sunburnt, bohemian urchins by now, before wandering out into the groves with my easel to paint another masterpiece.

  In my vision, that school report which declared, ‘Although I appreciate Art is a difficult subject for Ellen, as she has no ability whatsoever, it would be nice if occasionally she could concentrate and at least pretend to be working’ is no impediment to my watercolour masterpieces. I do recall throwing paint about quite a lot and being generally quite badly behaved in Art. But no matter, for once I was installed in my beautiful Corfiot villa my latent artistic skills would clearly awaken.

  Thursday, 21 April

  In the evenings, after the children go to bed, Simon and I sit out on the terrace and drink more wine and watch the lights across the mountainside and in the bay below. We can hear the dogs barking to each other in the village further down the hill and the cicadas singing in the garden and olive groves – and nothing else, apart from the very occasional motorbike gasping its way up the mountain.

  It is gloriously peaceful and romantic, until at a certain point each night hordes of bastarding crickets decide to investigate the light and start plopping down onto the terrace in huge numbers and blundering about, and trying to jump into our wine, and I run inside screaming while Simon shouts ‘They won’t hurt you, FFS!’ Gerald Durrell never had this problem.

  Tonight, though, before the nightly plague of locusts descended upon us, I told Simon of my splendid vision and plan for us to stay in Corfu. He was dubious, as I waxed lyrical about the new life we would have.

  ‘No one ever wants to go home from a holiday, Ellen,’ he said.

  ‘But wouldn’t it be wonderful? An old stone villa, nestling in the olive groves, with vines growing over the terraces so we could make our own wine. There would be an ancient retainer wandering the groves, called …’ I pause to think, ‘… Nico. He would have a donkey, and has mourned his lost love forever, and he never talks about what he did in the war, until one day he learns to trust us and tells of his exploits in the Greek Resistance, where Maria, the only woman he ever loved, was shot by the Nazis and died in his arms, and since then, his only friend was his donkey, until the lovably eccentric gringo family –’

  ‘– Pretty sure “gringo” is Mexican, darling.’

  ‘– SHADDUP! I’m telling you about my dream vision for our new life! Don’t put obstacles in my way. Where was I? Yes, Alexis –’

  ‘Who’s Alexis? Wasn’t she in Dynasty?’

  ‘The ancient retainer!’

  ‘I thought he was called Nico?’

  ‘WHATEVER! Nico, the mysterious, ancient retainer, wandering the groves with only his donkey for company, is taught to feel love and emotion again, through the simple companionship of the British children, and their hapless parents, who will have amusing scrapes and hilarious misunderstandings with the locals but Nico will help them become part of the community and then they will have a marvellous party in the olive groves, with lots of homemade wine and everyone will live happily ever after!’

  ‘Jesus, darling, how many of those chick-lit books with pink covers and cartoons of glasses of wine on the front have you read this week?’

  ‘Some,’ I said sulkily. There was an endless supply of such books in the house, left behind by previous holidaymakers. Surely part of the point of a holiday is to take many worthy, improving tomes with you, which you’ve been meaning to read for ages but not got around to, and then as soon as you arrive, abandon them for any jolly bonkbuster you can find?

  ‘What would we live on?’

  ‘Why, we would hardly need any money. We would make our own wine, like I keep telling you, if you were listening. We would need only some simple bread and cheese, we could probably make the cheese from the donkey milk –’

  ‘– can you milk donkeys?’

  ‘– how should I know? I expect so.’

  ‘I have never heard of donkey cheese.’

  ‘Well, we’ll get a fucking goat then, okay? Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions! Anyway, some simple bread and GOAT’S cheese, some wild honey from the hives in the olive groves, our own olive oil, there will be fruit trees around the villa, delicious peaches and persimmons –’

  ‘– What are persimmons?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Will you please stop interrupting? The point is we would hardly need any money.’

  ‘I’ve just googled persimmons, they are a bit like plums. We would need money, darling, how would we pay for electricity and telephones and water and heating? Where would the children go to school?’

  ‘The lovely little local school, like the one in the village here.’

  ‘But they don’t speak Greek! WE don’t speak Greek.’

  ‘I have a Latin GCSE.’

  ‘Darling, Latin and modern Greek are not even slightly the same thing. Latin and Ancient Greek are not even slightly the same thing. You have still failed to learn any French, after however many summers with my parents, how on earth are you going to learn Greek? We would be like those awful people on the daytime TV programmes who decide they are going to move abroad and then come home two weeks later because they can’t find the right brand of orange squash in the supermarkets. The Greek economy is buggered; you’d have to be mad to put your money into Greece right now.’

  ‘Ahhhh,’ I said cunningly. ‘But surely the state of the Greek economy means that we would get much more for our money?’

  ‘No, darling,’ said Simon and droned on about inflation and economics for a while, as I tuned out and thought of my olive groves and watercolours and the attractive shady hat I would wear to paint.

  When I tuned back in, he was still crushing my dream, demanding once more to know how I planned to pay for the utilities. I opened my mouth to suggest we would live by oil lamps and draw our water from an ancient stone well, but then I realised that I was veering dangerously into Louisa territory, and also in reality there was no way I would actually be able to live like that.

  Fortunately, at that point the locusts decided to swarm, which meant I could make a dignified retreat from Simon’s stupid questions about the practicalities of my vision. Or as dignified a retreat as one can make while running indoors shrieking, ‘ARRRGH! Are they in my hair? I don’t want them in my hair!’

  I refused to accept defeat, though, and spent the rest of the evening looking for the perfect house. I have a week to make my dream come true. I can totally do this!

  MAY

  Sunday, 1 May

  I failed to make the dream come true. Simon continued to crush my dream with his insistence on focusing on reality and practicality and the necessities of keeping our children shod and fed, and also the alarming vagaries of the Greek economy. He also staunchly refused to believe my pronouncements on things like it being optional
to pay tax in Greece, which I am pretty sure it is, and my sweeping statements about how we would just live off the land and everything would just fall into place once we had found the right house. And so, alas, we have returned to suburbia.

  Perhaps this is how Louisa found herself at the ‘retreat’? Perhaps she too just had a vision of a simpler life, and freed of the constraints of a dream-crushing husband like Simon she made the dream reality? But then again, I have been to Louisa’s reality, and it is distinctly muddy and damp and smells a bit. Also, Louisa’s vision is in a soggy wood in Scotland, not on a sun-drenched Greek mountainside, so it is more likely that Louisa is just crazy. I prefer this option, as I try to shy away from anything that suggests Louisa and I may have something in common.

  The washing machine has not been off since we came home. I don’t understand how this is possible, as I thought I had done all the laundry while we were on holiday, yet somehow there is still an unfeasible amount to do, even though all anyone wore was shorts and t-shirts. I failed to wear any of the shoes I lugged all the way to Corfu and back, as it turned out flip flops were all I needed, but I think I put my back out trying to carry my hand luggage and pretending it didn’t weigh a thing.

  The children are feral again, and have been ever since we landed, when, overtired and scratchy, they fought their way home from the airport. The sky is too low, the bluebells are fading, there is too much traffic and I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow. Simon says I just have a massive dose of the post-holiday blues, but I want to be sitting on my terracio (that might be Italian, actually. Or possibly just made up entirely) drinking quirky little local wines and watching my lovely children frolicking in the pool, and then later on watching the lights twinkle on, one by one, in the valley. In short, reality sucks and I hate my life and it is all very unfair and I am going to scream and scream until I am sick. Or, just, you know, mutter under my breath a bit.