Why Mummy Swears

by Gill Sims

  Later, I heard Peter talking to Simon.

  ‘Daddy, are all women just a bit mental?’ he asked gloomily.

  ‘Why do you ask, darling?’ said Simon.

  ‘Mummy and Jane are mental.’

  ‘You really shouldn’t call people “mental”, it’s not very nice,’ said Simon, non-committally.

  ‘But they are mental! What should I call them then?’

  Simon still did not actually deny that his beloved wife and adored firstborn child were ‘mental’, instead suggesting that perhaps ‘highly strung’ might be a better term for Peter to use.

  ‘Fine,’ said Peter. ‘Are all women as “highly strung” as Mummy and Jane?’

  ‘Oh, my son,’ said Simon sadly. ‘You have no idea of the deep and all-encompassing crazy that the female sex is capable of. And I’m afraid it is going to get an awful lot worse around here before too long.’

  ‘How come you can call them “crazy”, but I can’t call them “mental” and have to say they are “highly strung”?’ demanded Peter. ‘And what do you mean it is going to get worse? Do you mean they are going to go even more batshit than they already are?’

  ‘Peter, please don’t say “batshit”. Where do you even learn words like that?’

  ‘From Mummy. I overheard her saying that Auntie Louisa was a batshit hippy loon. It’s quite a good word, isn’t it? “Batshit.” She also said that you were going to go batshit when you found out she’d scraped the car again. Did you go batshit?’

  Thanks for that, Peter. Thanks a fucking bunch. I was waiting for the right moment to tell Simon that I may have had a bijou tête-à-tête with a small bollard in a car park, but now you’ve dropped me right in the proverbial, you little toerag!

  ‘Mummy scraped the car again? What the fuck? How? When? When was she planning on telling me?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Peter vaguely, having ‘accidentally’ volunteered just enough information to cause trouble and now losing interest with the blue touch paper thoroughly lit. ‘What did you mean about Mummy and Jane getting worse, though, Daddy? I shouldn’t think Jane could get any worse. She is very mean to me. Are you sure we can’t get rid of her, Daddy? We could have her adopted. We’d have to lie, of course, and tell them she was a nice person, because no one would want Jane if they knew what she was really like.’

  ‘Peter, that is not a nice way to talk about your sister.’

  ‘But she isn’t nice to me. She threatened to bog-wash me, just because I was in her room LOOKING at something. I didn’t even take anything, or touch anything. I was only LOOKING!’

  ‘What on earth is bog-washing?’ said Simon in confusion.

  ‘It’s when you hold someone’s head down the toilet and then flush it. That is the sort of person she is.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So you see, I don’t think she could get any worse, but you said she would, so what did you mean?’

  ‘Errrr, nothing, son. Nothing. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. With your mother too. But just between us, we will probably be wanting to keep our heads below the parapet for the next few years. And hide any sharp objects. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find your mother and see how she has managed to wreck the car this time.’

  I have no idea what he means either. I hid in the larder till I heard Simon go out to the garage, so successfully avoided the conversation about the car. It really is only a tiny scrape. And just a bit of a dent. You can hardly notice it.

  DECEMBER

  Friday, 2 December

  Firstly – AAAAARRRRGHHHHHH, FML, HOW in the name of everlasting fuck is it December already? I am not ready! December is for decking the halls with boughs of holly and rosy-cheeked carollers and Baileys, so much lovely Baileys, and I am not ready, not in the slightest. Work is frantic, with the Big Project to be finished for early January, I am still going to those awful HIIT classes, though I am not entirely sure why, apart from the fact that I don’t want Alan to feel that I am beaten that easily, but I do seem to be wobbling slightly less, and my desire for Mint Clubs has somewhat abated after reading how many burpees I would have to do to burn each one off. My festive spirit is lacking, gone away, hiding under a rock. I dunno. December will undoubtedly herald (I was pleased with that pun, but Simon didn’t get it all when I used it earlier, not even when I shouted ‘HARK!’ at him) a barrage of emails from our families, demanding present suggestions and wittering about Christmas dinner and bastarding Christmas puddings, not to mention the Christmas cards from people I have not seen in years and didn’t much like even back then, containing the miserable hell of the round robins detailing Jemima and Sebastian’s latest astonishing achievements. And, instead of one dispiriting Christmas party for the whole company in a second-rate hotel, there are millions of the bastarding things to go to. There is a ‘team’ Christmas lunch (Ed might cry), a department party and then the full company party. They are all in jolly nice hotels or restaurants, though, but there will be a fateful combination of lots of booze and the need to keep up the façade of being a Proper Person and also the tiny fact of them jumping to the conclusion that I am single and childless, which is why you should never assume because it makes an ass out of you and me and FML, and who am I any more, using expressions like that. On the plus side, if I keep the HIIT classes, I might manage a semi-slinky dress for the parties, instead of seeking out something whose main plus point is ‘forgiving’ …

  Oh God. So much to do.

  Secondly – tonight was finally the hallowed Christmas Fair. I say ‘finally’, but it was actually pretty much a race against time to get ready for it. But we did it.

  I had to take a precious afternoon off, having fibbed slightly and claimed I had a doctor’s appointment, cunningly telling Alan and co. that it was for ‘Women’s Problems’ in order to forestall any questions. Technically, I told myself, it was ‘Women’s Problems’, as everyone seems to think children are women’s problems rather than men’s. I have blithely used the ‘Women’s Problems’ excuse for years, but somehow it is slightly more embarrassing to have to trot it out to whippersnapper millennial sorts than the repressed middle-aged chaps at my old job.

  Cara, Katie, Sam and I, with a handful of other stalwarts, turned up at the hall this afternoon and basically threw every single fairy light we owned at it. I had sneaked into the park early one morning before the dog walkers and pinched a bin-bag full of ivy, which possibly may or may not technically be stealing, but is probably OK as it is For the Children.

  I also purchased a staple gun in a fit of enthusiasm, and I think it may now literally be the best thing I have ever owned. It’s amazing! Anything you want attached to a wall – BAM! Staple-gun it! I may staple-gun Simon’s bollocks to the wall, as he insisted he was far too busy to come along or pick up the kids today, saying that he had told me that it was a bad idea to take over the PTA. I stapled-gunned ivy all over the hall, ignoring the naysayers who were fretting about whether we were allowed to staple-gun things to the wall, and only slightly envisaging Simon’s face (the other good thing about a staple gun is that when people annoy you when you are stapling, you can secretly pretend you are Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver and mutter ‘You lookin’ at me?’ as you staple, which is remarkably satisfying). Kiki meanwhile floated about getting in everyone’s way and draping herself becomingly in ivy, until I brandished the staple gun at her menacingly and told her to pull her weight.

  The stallholders arrived, bearing their many wares. I had assumed they would be lovely, jolly, friendly, smiley ladies, but it turns out the crafting world is a cut-throat place, and I was forced to intervene in several spats as they attempted to encroach on each other’s space/annex extra tables/block views of competitors with strategically placed scarf stands. I may have to do more research next year, as apparently putting ‘Kooky Kandle Krafts’ next to ‘It’s a Bomb’ bath bombs (a truly unfortunate name) was a major faux pas, as they have been carrying on some sort of blood feud for years over Kooky Kandle Krafts mis
taking one of It’s a Bomb’s lurid concoctions for a cupcake she had just bought and attempting to eat it. It seems it got very ugly, as Kooky Kandles foamed at the mouth, and in between spitting out glitter accused It’s a Bomb of attempted murder (sort of understandable with that TRULY AWFUL NAME) and It’s a Bomb counter-accused Kooky Kandles of shamelessly stealing her stock, and they have been sworn enemies ever since.

  Other than that, it was relatively uneventful. To Sam’s immense relief, no one pissed on him during his Santa turn, though he did complain afterwards that spending two hours in a polyester Santa suit had given him prickly heat on his bollocks (‘I mean, there is a reason why I never wear man-made fibres, Ellen!’). He then grumbled that knowing his luck, this would be the week that all his lurking round Sainsbury’s paid off and he finally met the love of his life beside the extra virgin olive oil, just as he was squirming about, trying to discreetly relieve the itching, so that the love of his life would probably run for the hills, thinking Sam had crabs.

  Peter and Jane vanished into the melee of screaming, sugar-crazed children and old ladies (where do these flocks of old ladies come from that populate Christmas Fairs? You never see so many of them roaming in gangs at any other time. Do they have a special bus that they travel the country in, visiting every Christmas Fair they pass, and collecting more OAPs en route to swell their numbers, the better to block the aisles by standing around complaining about how disappointing the home baking stall is, and really, £3 for a sponge that looks like that, they would be ashamed to ask £3 for such a Sponge of Shame, and wasn’t it a pity there was no nice fruit cake?), and reappeared periodically to demand more money. I discovered afterwards that Peter had spent most of his money on the tombola, gambling with a dogged enthusiasm that suggests we might have trouble keeping him out of the bookies in future. Or perhaps I should try to harvest his potential gambling addiction for good and encourage him to become a professional poker player like Victoria Coren Mitchell? Apparently she makes loads of money playing poker. He might have to work on his poker face, though, as currently you can tell at least ten minutes in advance when he is working up to a poo (actually, Simon does the same), and even if he has only managed a silent but deadly fart he still can’t help but give a little snigger of joy at his latest achievement. I did once have high hopes that perhaps he could be destined for a career as an international gigolo playboy, as he is very good at charming old ladies, but that was before the farting showed no signs of abating. He could easily combine the international gigolo playboy thing with being a professional poker player, though, because as far as I am aware, they both involve spending a lot of time in casinos in places like Monte Carlo. Admittedly I have not put a lot of research into either career option.

  Kiki had had to go home, apparently to get herself and her children changed into something even more photogenic, and returned clad in an eye-poppingly tight Christmas jumper dragging a mutinous Lalabelle and Trixierose dressed as elves, and a disgruntled-looking man in a suit and tie, who turned out to be her husband Keith, as he hissed repeatedly, ‘For fuck’s sake, Karen, can you just put that bloody phone down for a second and stop with the photos?’ as Kiki hissed back, ‘Stop calling me Karen. Everyone needs to call me Kiki for my fucking brand, OK? You’ve ruined that Insta Story now. I’m going to have to do another one. Don’t you want that trip to the Maldives, Keith?’

  Sunday, 4 December

  After years of benign neglect by my father, he seems to have decided in his old age that he is ready to play the doting family man. Daddy and Natalia rang this morning to say they were ‘just passing’ again, and thought they might pop in for Sunday lunch. Up until that point I had delegated Sunday lunch to Simon, who had declared that we would just have cheese sandwiches. I was quite looking forward to Simon discovering that actually cheese sandwiches are not entirely the simple repast he had planned, because Jane will only eat cheese sandwiches if the cheese is grated, not sliced, and Simon will only eat cheese sandwiches if they have pickle in, but everyone else threatens to vomit on the spot if there is even a trace of pickle on their sandwiches and Peter doesn’t like butter in his cheese sandwiches. By the time everybody has specified their cheese fucking sandwich preferences, I have lost the will to live and want to just tell them all to cock off and starve and feed the cheese to my lovely dog, who doesn’t care if it’s grated or sliced or even cut into manageable pieces, as he’s perfectly capable of eating blocks of cheese whole. (As we discovered when he broke into the fridge and ate a chunk of cheddar, an unopened packet of taleggio, a good slab of brie and a whole camembert. He then projectile-vomited a fondue. Which was nice.) Anyway, the main reason I don’t just feed him the cheese is because it gives him cheesy bum. He is hard to love when he has cheesy bum.

  However, my allegedly ‘just passing’ father deciding to invite himself to Sunday lunch meant a mercy dash to Sainsbury’s to grab provisions for a roast, where I may or may not have taken advantage of insisting that Peter and Jane stayed at home with Simon to also go to a very quick HIIT class while I was out, as I have got carried away with myself and bought a Christmas party dress that is not forgiving in the slightest, but is very definitely slinky. At Sainsbury’s I also bought many amusing things as ‘stocking fillers’, which I will either put somewhere safe and find sometime around July, or I will forget about, or in the extremely unlikely event of them actually making it into anyone’s stockings, everyone will be utterly underwhelmed by them and ignore them. I did get the last milk chocolate Chocolate Oranges, though, hurrah! I snatched them from under the nose of a scary-looking woman who I am sure I once had a run-in with at a soft-play – there can’t be many people with ‘Juztin Beebor 4ever’ tattooed on their neck! She did look more than mildly threatening, though, so I beat a hasty retreat at that point, no doubt to Simon’s relief, as he struggles to understand the necessity of Lovely Things for stockings and makes unhelpful comments like ‘Why can’t we just put their normal presents in the stockings? Why do we have to have all this bastarding tat for the stockings?’ This is yet another sign that Simon has No Soul, for everyone knows that stockings are for small, trinkety things, and that the Big Presents (even if they are quite physically small, they are still the Big Presents) go under the tree, and one should not deviate from this or one will break The System and Christmas will be ruined FOREVER!

  Lunch went off relatively well. Peter has developed a thumping great crush on Natalia and flirted with her most shamelessly before attempting to prove himself worthy of her love by eating his own weight in roast beef and Yorkshire puddings. Natalia seemed unimpressed by his feat, however, even when Peter informed her that he had just eaten twelve Yorkshire puddings, nine roast potatoes and four helpings of beef. I honestly don’t know where he puts it – it is an astonishing thing. Since Natalia seemed disinclined to declare her undying love for him in recognition of his heroic digestive system, Peter announced that he could eat more Yorkshires than that, actually, and was all set for another helping, when I was forced to forbid it, for fear he might actually puke. I don’t know where that child puts his food. He eats an obscene amount and never seems to put on an ounce, whereas if I had eaten as many Yorkshire puddings as he had, I wouldn’t be able to do my skirt up tomorrow, HIIT class or no HIIT class.

  Anyway, it was a tiny bit awkward when Daddy asked what we were doing for Christmas, and I had to say we were going to Mum’s.

  ‘Oh,’ said Daddy. ‘And Jessica too?’

  ‘Err, yes. Jessica too.’

  ‘Right,’ said Daddy. ‘That’s a bit of a shame, because actually we had hoped to spend Christmas with you and your sister. You know, Natalia’s first Christmas with the family. Couldn’t you change your plans? And speak to Jessica too?’ asked Daddy plaintively.

  I choked on my wine. ‘Change our plans?’ I spluttered. ‘Daddy, are you seriously suggesting that you want me to tell Mum that we are not coming for Christmas because we are spending it with you and Natalia? Jesus Christ, Daddy! Have
you forgotten what Mum is like? She will literally hire a hitman and have you killed, or have us kidnapped and driven to Yorkshire to make sure we spend Christmas with her. I don’t want to have to go all the way to Yorkshire tied up in the back of a Transit van. I get travel sick! And not only that, Jessica does not change plans, you know that. I’m pretty sure Jessica bribed the hospital staff to keep Granny’s life support switched on for an extra week so she didn’t have to cancel her holiday to Antigua! She is not going to countenance the Christmas plans being changed.’

  ‘Oh, you exaggerate, Ellen!’ said Daddy. ‘Jessica isn’t that bad. Your mother, on the other hand … Well, I suppose I see your point. The woman is a stone-cold, batshit-mental bitch!’

  ‘Even Grandpa gets to say batshit and bitch,’ objected Peter. ‘That’s not fair. Why don’t I?’

  ‘Because I am not responsible for your grandfather’s language and I am responsible for yours!’ I snapped, wondering if I should be defending my mother against Daddy’s description of her, especially talking about her like that in front of Natalia, but in truth I was struggling to come up with counter arguments against it, as it was a fairly accurate assessment of her character.

  Christ, I will be glad to get back to work for a rest!

  Thursday, 8 December

  Spanxed to the hilt (I should perhaps have gone for a slightly more forgiving dress – the HIIT classes and lack of biscuits have not had that dramatic an effect), I tripped merrily off to the Big Christmas Party last night.

  Oh, it was divine. I rather regretted the Spanx as I could not do justice to the lovely food and I did consider popping to the loo to take them off – but then what to do with them? They were too large to fit in my dinky clutch bag and too expensive to simply be abandoned. And what if someone found them and put two and two together and realised that I was looking rather more bulgy after my trip to the bogs, and they thought perhaps I had been shagging and had cast them aside in a moment of passion instead of merely wishing to restore the circulation to my nether regions? I kept the Spanx on.