Why Mummy Swears

by Gill Sims

  ‘It’s plain to see you’re single, Ellen,’ he grinned.

  ‘What? Why? Why would you say that?’ I said. ‘Do I look like some sad old desperate tart or something?’ Oh God, I’ve tried too hard, haven’t I? I should have stuck with what I know and worn ballet flats and a nice cardigan instead of trying to be edgy. I KNEW getting a fringe cut last week was a bad idea.

  ‘No, it’s just that no one would have four cocktails with pickled onion garnishes if they were going home to snog someone, would they?’ He winked.

  ‘I might as well have all the pickled onions,’ sighed James. ‘My wife’s either too knackered or too busy with the kids to snog me anyway.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you end up with the old ball and chain,’ sniggered Alan. ‘You could be footloose and fancy free like Ellen and me!’

  I rather liked the sound of being footloose and fancy free. Also, after four Gibsons I wasn’t really capable of stringing together a coherent enough sentence to correct Alan, and merely beamed around hazily, hoping I wouldn’t fall over when I had to go for a wee.

  Monday, 7 November

  So, one month into the new job, and I think it’s safe to say that some cracks are starting to appear. I say ‘cracks’. I mean massive great buggering chasms. In an effort to make sure the household tasks are shared equally between Simon and me, I drew up a careful rota of who does what and when etc., including whose turn it is to make dinner on any given night. I pinned it to the fridge and talked Simon through it. He huffed and he puffed and he sighed and he tutted, but he has been doing his allotted tasks. His allotted tasks and no bloody more, I should add, so if it is his day to drop the kids at school, and they spill Coco Pops all over the floor, he won’t hoover them up if it is not his day to hoover, he’ll leave them to be crushed into the floor until I get home and hoover them up, because it’s ‘my turn’ for that. I would very much like to implement a similar work-to-rule strategy, but I lack his stubbornness and ability to turn a blind eye to the mess.

  I spent Sunday afternoon cooking and freezing various dinners for throughout the week, because we are starting a big project this week, the first really big project I’ve been involved in since I started, and I was probably going to have to stay late some nights, so I reckoned that at least if there were some back-up dinners in the freezer I could just defrost something and everyone could still have a decent meal.

  When I came home tonight to find that instead of cooking anything himself, he had defrosted not only the tagine that I had intended for tomorrow night but also the chicken casserole I had earmarked for Thursday, because apparently ‘we couldn’t decide what we wanted,’ I lost the plot.

  ‘FFS, Simon! I made that for tomorrow. You were supposed to make dinner tonight.’

  ‘I DID make dinner tonight! I heated all that up! What is that if not MAKING DINNER?’

  ‘CHEATING! It’s cheating! It’s not cooking, it’s heating up the stuff I had made for the rest of the week.’

  ‘How is it OK for you to just defrost and heat it up, but not for me?’ he demanded.

  ‘Because I MADE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE! Because I spent MY Sunday afternoon making it, while you lay on the sofa in front of Wheeler Fucking Dealers –’

  ‘I was not watching Wheeler Dealers. I haven’t watched it on point of principle since Edd China left!’ he interrupted.

  ‘Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you were watching. The point is, you chose to spend Sunday afternoon doing fuck all, while I chose to spend it cooking so I didn’t have to think about it for the rest of the week, and now you’ve gone and CHEATED by using the stuff I made, ALL the stuff I made, and chucking out the leftovers. So you can bloody well cook tomorrow. And the rest of the week.’

  ‘Why? Why do I have to do that? I am doing my share. Your children are fed, on my night. Tomorrow is your night, YOU bloody well cook!’

  ‘But you haven’t cooked. I cooked!’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to cook ahead for the week, I don’t see why you can’t cook enough for every night, instead of just your nights,’ said Simon nastily.

  ‘Because I shouldn’t have to,’ I said. ‘Because then I’m cooking for every night of the week – and what are you doing? Do you want to do more housework instead?’

  ‘I’M DOING ENOUGH BLOODY HOUSEWORK!’ roared Simon. ‘Christ, do you have any idea how hard it is trying to hold down a fucking career and having to be a sodding charlady as well?’

  ‘YES!’ I yelled back. ‘Funnily enough, I DO. I’m only asking you to do your equal bloody share, that’s all.’

  ‘And do you think my father would have been as successful as he was if HE’D had to think about the fucking hoovering or the bastarding dinners? NO! He got to concentrate on what HE needed to do, because he had my mother to look after him. And how am I meant to be a success when you are constantly nagging me? My father came home to a proper dinner, not some shit out the freezer, and a clean house, and no one ever fucking whined on at him about childcare or ANY of that crap!’

  ‘What the FUCK does your father have to do with this?’ I demanded. ‘Things have changed. WOMEN WORK NOW, they don’t generally tend to get the option of staying at home, playing the little woman to the big man who goes out into the fucking world and brings home the woolly mammoth to feast on. I CAN BRING HOME MY OWN MAMMOTH, even if your mother couldn’t.’

  ‘LEAVE MY MOTHER OUT OF THIS!’

  ‘You started it, going on about your bloody father. And do you think he gives your mother any credit for her part in his success? Can’t you see that your mother has spent most of her life bored and frustrated trying to find a way to validate herself?’

  ‘My mother is perfectly happy. She enjoyed looking after us all. It’s a shame you don’t feel the same.’

  ‘Your mother washed your pants and did every bloody thing for you until you moved in with me. She bought you SIXTY PAIRS OF PANTS when you went to university, so you could go home every couple of months and get your washing done, so you didn’t have to do it yourself. Your mother is a big part of why you are such a useless fucker now. And FYI, NO ONE ENJOYS WASHING PANTS, SIMON, NOT EVEN YOUR MOTHER!’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. All I want is a wife who supports me, and all I get is grief!’

  ‘All I want is a husband who fucking supports me, and all I get is complaints because I’m not some sodding Stepford wife. Go fuck yourself!’

  ‘YOU go fuck yourself!’

  ‘I said it first. I win!’

  ‘See? You’re impossible and childish.’

  We aren’t speaking now.

  Tuesday, 8 November

  The morning started badly. Sometimes I feel like I might as well be invisible as an actual person – my role is to find missing PE kits and water bottles and homework while everyone else faffs around and expects me to facilitate them. The final straw today, which might not sound much, but sometimes it’s the little things, was Simon vanishing into the en suite just before I had to leave to drop the kids at breakfast club to go for a lengthy and leisurely shit, meaning I couldn’t get in to brush my teeth, despite me loudly announcing that I was going to brush my teeth and then we were leaving immediately after that. Bad enough that he had ignored the chaos around him, focusing only on making and drinking his coffee, while I slapped together sandwiches and filled in permission slips that the children had ‘only just found’ and tested them on their spellings while trying to put on my make-up so that I looked like a calm and presentable professional person. But to pick the bathroom where my toothbrush was for his morning shit, leaving me the choice of being late, or going with unbrushed teeth, was just selfish! I hammered on the door and broke my vow to never speak to him again, as I bade him hurry up, to which he replied these things couldn’t be hurried. I hammered again and told him he would have to take the children to school, and was informed he couldn’t possibly, because he is very Busy and Important, and
that would make him late, despite me hammering on the door again and reminding him that I had a big meeting this morning and also couldn’t be late. Finally, he sauntered out, looking pleased with himself, and I was able to dash in (holding my breath against the stench) and have a very perfunctory scrub, before hurling the children in the car and screeching off down the road, while the children asked what the rush was, and I explained once more about my NEW JOB and IMPORTANT MEETING and they looked bored and uninterested. Neither of them wished me luck, or said well done, or that they hoped my day would go well. As far as my loving family are concerned, my sole reason for existence is to serve them. I do not exist as a person in my own right to them. I am just the packed-lunch maker, the clothes washer, the hooverer, the fishfinger cooker and the pants picker-upper.

  I hurtled into the office, only just on time, and slid into the Thinking Space about ten seconds before Alan, who was followed by James looking hollow-eyed and yawning.

  ‘Been out on the piss, James?’ said Alan.

  ‘No, my fucking five-year-old had nightmares – he was up half the night. Every bloody time my wife came back to bed, she woke me up and I’m knackered!’

  ‘Doesn’t your wife work too?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, apparently she fell asleep on the train this morning and missed her stop or something. She’s blaming me for some reason, FFS!’

  Lydia shot in shortly after James, jabbering frantically into her phone.

  ‘I know, I know, please, Mum, I’ll be back as soon as I can, please just for the morning, OK? I’ll try to get Chris to come home if I can’t get away.’

  ‘Everything all right, Lydia?’ enquired Alan smoothly.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ said Lydia shortly.

  ‘Another domestic crisis, is it?’ said Alan. ‘What is it this time?’

  ‘My nanny’s sick,’ said Lydia miserably. ‘So my mother is standing in for the morning so that I can be here, but she is not coping very well.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ said Alan. ‘Are we the only ones keeping it together this morning, Ellen? James over there with eyes like pissholes in the snow. Lydia – Lydia, you’re wearing odd shoes! And Ed and the new client are due in at any moment. And Joe’s not here because he’s at his girlfriend’s first scan, so no doubt he will shortly be joining the ranks of the sleep-deprived zombies too. I bet you’re glad you don’t have kids, Ellen, looking at the state of these two.’

  I opened my mouth, and thought of the rows, the ingratitude, the being taken for granted. Although obviously I loved my family, just at the moment I didn’t like them very much. I closed my mouth again, and Ed shuffled in, looking disgruntled at being dislodged from his office, with the VIP client in tow. Lydia hastily shoved her feet under a beanbag.

  Wednesday, 9 November

  Oh fuckadoodledoo, buggeringratsarses, cockingdogsknobs and twatdiddlingfucksticks. Buoyed up with smug superiority at the wonder of the Halloween Disco I had organised (apart from the green face thing, that was not so good), I had been blithely swanning along, feeling like I had discharged all my PTA duties most splendidly, and could forget all about it now.

  Apparently not, because while I hiding in Pret with James, avoiding Alan, who had given us a long lecture on the evils of gluten and why we should all be eating sashimi for lunch (Alan’s ‘clean eating’, I have noticed, seems to take the form of being a sanctimonious cross-fit fucker Sunday to Thursday and drinking his own body weight in anything vaguely alcoholic Friday and Saturday. Apparently, he assures me, this is totally what the cavemen would have done, had they had cave pubs), in came another email from Lucy Atkinson’s Perfect Mummy:

  Hi Ellen,

  Just realised that I hadn’t forwarded you the list of stall holders who have already booked for the Christmas Fayre – here you go. I should probably also remind you that you need to get the posters etc advertising the Fayre up this week, as the hall is booked for Friday 2nd December. There’s quite a few stalls already booked, but you will need at least another ten – try and book different things, as no one wants a Fayre that is only selling scarves and cupcakes. You also need to talk to the nursery about their stall, and the school Fairtrade committee about their stall, and make sure you have enough mulled wine and mince pies for the night, and you’ll need plenty of volunteers to help set up and clear away, ideally some big strong dads to put all the tables up and down. Oh, and you’ll need to get someone to be Santa for the grotto. And you’ll need a grotto. Don’t worry, it’s really nothing a few fairy lights can’t do! Oh, and don’t forget to ask for donations for raffle and tombola prizes! A bottle tombola is always fun, and avoids those donations of 1970s bathsalts!

  Good Luck! Xxxxxx

  Fuck My Fucking Life. As well as a full-time job and keeping up the façade of being childless to my colleagues, because now it would be officially Awkward to come clean, I have to pull together a Christmas Fayre (FFS, why is it a Fayre? Why not a Fair? Is there some bylaw that we have to use a cutesy ye olde worlde spellinge to make it more Festivitied? I may rebel in my first significant act as PTA Chair and declare it to simply be a Christmas Fair), and I have three weeks to do this. I am almost certainly going to have to use a glue gun to achieve this. Possibly a staple gun as well. And given the difficulty to get the bastards to volunteer for the Halloween Disco, possibly a real gun to dragoon parent volunteers in on pain of death. I will try to look on the bright side and pretend it is an episode of Challenge Anneka, and I am pulling everything together against the odds but with less running around manically while wearing a jumpsuit.

  I shall start by sending a Stern Email to all potential helpers. And then I shall abandon James to his crayfish salad and passive–aggressive grumbles about his wife, before I tell him to shut the fuck up and take some responsibility for his kids, and then go and cheer myself up by buying a pair of impractical and probably unethical shoes.

  Thursday, 10 November

  Well. My Stern Email had mixed results. I suggested a quick meeting at teatime with children welcome and me once again providing the fishfingers in the hope that free fishfingers might entice all the parents who complained they couldn’t come to meetings because they were too late and they didn’t have childcare (my earlier, gloriously optimistic idea of enticing parents in by holding meetings in the pub having fallen at the first hurdle), but unsurprisingly the only people who were able to come were Sam, Katie and Cara Cartwright.

  I hurtled in from work, shoved two dozen fishfingers and a bag of frozen chips in the oven, and we cracked on. I agreed if Cara wanted to dress up as a sexy elf, she was welcome to, but on her head be it if people thought we were a sex party PTA, at which point she somewhat lost her enthusiasm for slutty elf costumes. Despite Cara’s obsession with fishnet stockings and skimpy get-ups, nonetheless we were powering through organising it nicely, as we are basically all sensible people with the same goal.

  Katie was delegated to price up and buy the cheapest mulled wine that could be found that still had a reasonable alcoholic content without actually endangering eyesight, Sam had grudgingly agreed to be Santa, but only if he was allowed to take the Santa suit home and thoroughly boil wash it first, as it did have some very dubious stains and a whiff about it that suggested it hadn’t seen a washing machine since Mrs P was avoiding PTA swingers in the eighties.

  As I could obviously no longer surreptitiously print the posters at work, I volunteered Simon to do it and whack them up all over the neighbourhood, while I tried to drum up some stalls via the wonder that is the local Facebook groups. I say ‘wonder’. Mostly they are a fascinating demonstration of the utter batshit-crazy and thinly veiled racism that lurks within our suburban streets, among the ‘urgent’ requests for recommendations for ‘reliable’ tradesmen (why is it always urgent? I get how you could urgently need a plumber or an electrician, but I am always baffled by the people who need a decorator, stat). Some of my favourite crazy posts, apart from the endless debates about dog shit, were the lady who posted for weeks demanding
to know who had stolen her budgie, which had flown out the window and not returned, complete with insisting she was going to involve the police, and the man who started a campaign to stop people trimming their hedges, as it was ‘torturing plants’. Add to that the veiled threats about ‘You know who you are, you, who did that thing, that I’m not going to say what it was, but you know what I am talking about,’ followed by heated rows about how it wasn’t them what done it and I know what YOU done but I’m not saying here, you slag, and what appears to be the general complete and utter lack of any grasp of spelling or grammar in the local populace – an astonishing number of people have trouble with their TV ‘ariels’, and if it’s not their ‘ariels’ playing up, it’s their ‘arials’, plus many a ‘chester draws’ is offered for sale, along with my own personal favourites of a ‘knecklace’ and a ‘Victorian cabinet – stamp says made in 1914’, and you can while away a frightening amount of time and judgement. It’s actually better than Jeremy Kyle. However, it also appears to be useful for finding stallholders for Christmas Fayres/Fairs, so I shall have to dip my toe into the murky waters instead of merely watching agog.

  Cara was to menace tombola donations out of unsuspecting parents and purchase the entire contents of Poundland, and we pretty much had it all sorted when Kiki with two Ks appeared.

  ‘Oh,’ she sniffed, ‘I see you’ve started without me. I was trying to get some photos of Lalabelle and Trixierose playing in the autumn leaves, but they kept crying they were cold, which is useless and a total waste of the tasteful knitwear I bought them. You should have said if it was going to start promptly!’

  ‘Sorry, Kiki,’ I said. ‘I did say we would be starting at 6.15 sharp and it is … 6.43 now. Do your girls want some fishfingers and chips?’