Why Mummy Swears

by Gill Sims

  ‘Someone has died in it?’ supplied Jane.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Because they are dead people’s shops! And you are trying to change the subject away from the fact that you ARE RUINING MY LIFE!!’

  ‘Look, Jane, darling,’ I said soothingly. ‘Even if I were to allow you an Instagram account – which I’m absolutely not going to do, by the way – I would definitely not even be thinking about buying you £600 cameras, or £800 drones, OR a new laptop as you have a perfectly serviceable laptop, nor would I be shelling out for expensive editing software. BECAUSE YOU ARE ELEVEN!’

  ‘That is just another way that you are ruining my life!’ shrieked Jane. ‘IF you had let me go on Instagram when I first wanted to, I would totally have like a MASSIVE following by now, and so GoPro would give me all that for free. It’s YOUR FAULT you have to buy me ANYTHING! I could be getting sponsored for EVERYTHING by now AND making loads of money for my future from YouTube ads. There is a TODDLER who makes LIKE MILLIONS REVIEWING TOYS. But no! No, YOU like have to make a STUPID FUSS about like “internet safety” and RUIN MY LIFE! It’s like you don’t even want me to be like happy or like a multi-millionaire YouTuber, because you don’t even like LIKE me!’

  ‘Oh, FFS!’ I shouted back. ‘Come on, out of the people in your class whose parents HAVE allowed them Instagram and YouTube accounts, HOW MANY OF THEM now have millions of followers and are living off their sponsored posts? Hmm?’

  ‘I never said it was easy,’ snarled Jane. ‘But everyone else in my class is STUPID! It would be different for me. And what about Kiki?’

  ‘But everyone thinks that, darling,’ I reasoned. ‘And only a tiny handful of people are successful at it. And Kiki can only do what she does because she has someone to pay the mortgage and the bills. She doesn’t actually have to worry about money.’

  ‘Yes, but someone gets to be the really successful ones. So why shouldn’t it be me? If you would only let me have a chance at it. But you won’t! BECAUSE YOU DON’T EVEN CARE ABOUT MY DREAM, OR MY JOURNEY!’

  Oh, these bastarding journeys. Everyone is on a fucking ‘journey’ these days. People can’t just ‘do stuff’. It is all part of the ‘journey’. I blame The X Factor. That is where all this bloody ‘journey’ nonsense seems to originate from, unfortunate souls not realising that they are being exploited for car-crash TV by having their failed auditions filmed and broadcasted and then tearfully talking afterwards about how having their humiliation shown to the nation has just been part of an ‘amazing journey’.

  ‘For goodness sake, Jane, you are being ridiculous.’

  ‘And now you are mocking my dream. You are making fun of me. I know I am meant to be a famous YouTube star, I just know it!’

  ‘Oh, get a grip,’ I snapped. ‘I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. And what are you going to be “famous” for? Opening boxes? Kinder eggs? Putting on make-up? Pouting into the camera while revealing your latest #sponsored #collab? These aren’t realistic goals. These people aren’t going to be able to do this forever, and what will they do then, when all they are qualified to do is duckface and open packaging? What happened to your plans to become a marine biologist or an archaeologist or palaeontologist? Why, all of a sudden, have you become so fixated on this vlogging bollocks that I actually caught you giving a running commentary to your phone on walking down the stairs the other day, only you were concentrating so hard on filming yourself that you fell down the stairs and were lucky you didn’t break your neck. I know I told you that you could be whatever you wanted to be when you grew up, but I didn’t mean for you to become some fanny on the internet. But look. If having a social media account really means that much to you, why don’t we compromise, and even though you’re a bit too young, you can have a Facebook account, as long as you add Daddy and me as friends so we can check no undesirables are trying to contact you? Hmmm? How does that sound, sweetheart?’

  Jane once again stared at me as though I had just suggested she took a shit in her hands and clapped.

  ‘Facebook!’ she whispered aghast. ‘FACEBOOK! OMG, are you serious? Facebook is so over. It’s for old people. Like you. I can’t believe you would even suggest that to me. That is just cruel. It’s child cruelty. I could call Childline. Do you know what people would like say if they knew I had a Facebook account? I don’t know why you like even bothered having me, when you hate me so much.’

  And with that, she finally flounced out the room, giving the door a good hard slam on the way out, which woke the dog up, to his immense disgust, and caused him to cast one of his very judgy looks at me.

  ‘Don’t you start,’ I said.

  Thankfully Jane had left before I got a chance to answer her final (hopefully rhetorical) question, but when she is like this, I do honestly wonder why I bothered having children. Surely it isn’t meant to be this hard. Was it worth all that effort I put into bringing up a strong, brave, independent warrior girl, who would march to the beat of her own drum, just for her to put all that spirit I tried to instil in her to use in arguing with me about every damn thing under the sun? And what was the point anyway? Teaching her about feminism and the suffragettes and dressing her in jeans and hoodies (in fairness, that was as much an aesthetic decision as an ideological one, because if ever there was a child that did not suit pink it was Jane, and most of the pretty girly skirts and sparkly T-shirts were pink, which just looked dreadful on her), just for her to turn around and decide that, apparently just like almost every other child in the country, she wants to be an internet sensation and make millions pouting on Instagram or prancing around on YouTube. Did Emily Davison die under the hooves of the King’s horse for the nation’s pre-adolescent girls to have no greater ambition than opening boxes and applying lipstick? DID SHE?

  I was musing and muttering all this to myself when Jane stormed back in.

  ‘Since you are intent on RUINING MY LIFE by refusing me the chance to follow my dreams, can I get my ears pierced for Christmas instead?’ she demanded.

  ‘Jane, we have been over this as well. I said you could get them pierced when you are thirteen.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s not FOREVER!’ argued Jane. ‘Why can’t I have them done now? All I want is my ears pierced. That’s all!’

  ‘I thought all you wanted was about £3,500 worth of electronic equipment to make a fool of yourself on the internet,’ I countered. Jane glowered at me dangerously. My resolve was cracking. I did not have the strength for another showdown. Jane glowered harder.

  ‘OK, OK, I’ll compromise. You’re not getting them pierced for Christmas because I can’t stand the thought of Granny moaning the whole time that you look common, but you can get them pierced for your twelfth birthday, OK? One year early. And ONE piercing in each ear. That’s all!’

  ‘Thank you, Mummy,’ said Jane sweetly, and skipped off looking so smugly pleased with herself that I couldn’t help but wonder if the whole YouTube/GoPro row had been expressly engineered just so that I would be broken and weak when she actually went in for the kill and asked for what she really wanted. In fairness, it’s not really that different to the time Daddy said he would buy me a dress for a university ball and we went shopping in London and I found the perfect dress straightaway in Selfridges, and Daddy looked at the price tag and turned pale and said he wasn’t paying that for a skimpy frock, so I then tried on every single dress in every single shop on Oxford Street until he lost the will to live and agreed that he would pay anything, literally anything, to be allowed to go home and have a large gin and tonic, so we went back to Selfridges and bought The Dress. So I suppose Jane does come by it honestly.

  Only now do I appreciate why poor Daddy was so in need of that stiff gin, though. Parenting is bloody hard work, and actually those early, sleep-deprived, tiny-baby days were only the start of it. I keep assuming that at some point it will get better, easier, but it never really seems to. The challenges change, of course, but it never really seems to get any less hard. And it is
all mixed up as well by the fact that although sometimes you could cheerfully throw your precious moppets out of the window (or deny their existence at work), equally you would never give a second thought to literally tearing limb from limb anyone who dared to even think about causing them any sort of harm, or indeed was foolish enough to suggest that your cherubs were in any way not utterly perfect. For although they are monstrous hell beasts, they are YOUR monstrous hell beasts, and also the best thing that ever happened to you, and you love them so much that sometimes you think your heart will burst. Gina Ford never told us how to deal with all this!

  Friday, 16 December

  I have been meaning to organise a night out with Hannah and Sam and Katie for ages, and have never quite got around to it, and it is nearly Christmas and if we don’t do it NOW, then it will be January and everyone will be poor and depressed and on a diet/drying out/both, and so today I decided to just throw caution to the winds and after the hellishly long and soul-destroying Christmas Concert (perhaps my punishment for lying to work about being in the dentist was being tormented by endless tuneless singing until I longed for root-canal surgery as the less painful option), I cornered Sam and Katie in the playground after school.

  ‘Let’s go out tonight!’ I said brightly.

  They both looked at me as if I had grown an extra head. ‘Tonight,’ they repeated blankly.

  ‘Yes, tonight!’ I chirped.

  ‘But Ellen, we haven’t planned it!’ said Katie in astonishment.

  ‘Where would we go?’ grumbled Sam, looking frightened.

  ‘The pub, of course, like we always do. We’d be being spontaneous! People do it all the time at work.’ I cried.

  ‘They are young people, though. And … and … the children?’ they whimpered. ‘Our precious moppets. What will become of them?’

  ‘I am a single father, remember, Ellen,’ pointed out Sam. ‘Robin is as much use as a marzipan dildo when it comes to actually stepping up to the mark and taking any responsibility for our children. Actually, he was about as much use as a marzipan dildo in bed too, if it comes to that,’ he added, with only a trace of bitterness.

  ‘It’s perfectly simple,’ I said. ‘Katie, Tim will be home tonight, won’t he, because you already told me that he was making dinner this evening, so he can make dinner AND put his daughters to bed, and Sam, Sophie and Toby can come to mine for a sleepover, and Simon can look after them. To be honest, it’s probably less work for him than his own children by themselves, as with Sophie and Toby there, the boys will just play mind-numbing computer games and the girls will do whatever it is eleven-year-old girls do that involves so much wittering like demented budgies, shrieking and glitter, rather than Peter and Jane just fighting like cat and dog like they will do with no distractions.’

  ‘But what will I wear?’ wailed Katie. ‘I haven’t planned. I’ll need to put on proper make-up and straighten my hair and I have not mentally prepared myself for that! I can’t just go out with no warning. What will I say to Tim?’

  ‘Has Tim never rung you to say he’s just popping out for a drink after work, or casually informed you that he’s going for a pint on a Saturday night?’ I demanded.

  ‘Well, yes, but –’

  ‘No buts! It’s exactly the same. Just text him, and tell him he’ll need to be home on time because you’re going out for a drink, because you are a grown-up and a real person and NOT JUST A MUMMY! CAN YOU DO THAT, KATIE? CAN I GET A HELL, YEAH?!’

  ‘Err, I suppose so. But I still don’t know what I’ll wear. I haven’t told the girls I’m going out, so they aren’t prepared. What if they’re upset?’

  ‘Katie, trust me. Stick them in front of a couple of extra episodes of Paw Patrol and they wouldn’t notice if you were dancing naked around the living room with your tits on fire, let alone if you’ve just popped out. Their father will take perfectly good care of them, perhaps not to your standard, and they will wear the wrong jammies to bed, but they will survive mismatching pyjamas for one night without lasting psychological damage,’ I barked.

  ‘OK,’ wavered Katie. ‘This feels weird, though. I don’t know if I like going on a night out without building up to it for at least two weeks. It’s not normal!’

  ‘It’s perfectly normal,’ I reminded her. ‘It’s what we did for years and years before we had children and convinced ourselves that we must slavishly devote every waking hour to their whims and needs. But actually we will be better people if we occasionally take some time for ourselves and do something spontaneous that reminds us that we are people too, not just parents.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Katie. ‘Yes, all right, I’m in!’

  ‘Hurray!’ I said. ‘Sam, what about you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ whined Sam. ‘My favourite blue shirt is in the wash, and I feel a bit bloated and I still have last week’s Outlander to watch, and it might rain and –’

  ‘Sam!’ I said sternly. ‘Man the fuck up, wear a different shirt and come to the pub. I have never heard such feeble excuses in all my life!’

  ‘I’m just saying. OK, fine then, I’ll come, but you can buy the first round, for being such a bully and making us leave our comfort zone.’

  ‘I’m encouraging you to be spontaneous, FFS! What if you do meet someone wandering around Sainsbury’s and they ask you for a date and you’re all, “Ooooh, well, I dunno, I don’t like going out without any warning!” Consider this a practice run.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to meet anyone at Sainsbury’s anyway,’ said Sam gloomily. ‘All the single-looking men are skipping round with baskets full of asparagus and mussels and dinky little pots of artichoke hearts and expensive wine. I think they are put off by my trolley full of Petits Filous and frozen peas.’

  ‘Well, then. Maybe this is your chance to meet someone tonight. You’re not going to meet anyone sitting at home in your onesie perving over Jamie Fraser, and anyway, he hardly takes his top off this week AT ALL, so there was really no point to that episode.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Sam. ‘What is the point of Outlander if Jamie doesn’t get naked at least once?’

  I then had to ring Hannah and talk her through exactly the same thing, complete with the Outlander spoilers, and the reminder that as a doctor, Charlie was technically probably more qualified to look after her children than she was. But I talked her round in the end, and off to the pub we all went.

  After the first half-hour, during which Katie texted Tim obsessively and Sam complained his shirt made him look fat and Hannah rang Charlie to make sure he had remembered to pay the wedding venue deposit, I suggested maybe a little round of Gibsons.

  ‘S’fucking brillant, bein’ nout!’ slurred Katie an hour later.

  ‘We’sh should do thish more!’ shouted Hannah.

  ‘I ashked for extra pickle nonions! No schnogging tonight!’ cried Sam. ‘Oooh, he looksh fit, hash anyone got Double Mint?’

  Monday, 19 December

  FML, FML, FML! Fuck my fucking life! I am hurtling with terrifying speed towards my Annual Christmas Meltdown, which usually takes place on Christmas Eve, but due to the summons from Yorkshire has had to be brought forward a little.

  Simon is getting on my tits as I still haven’t forgiven him for the massive row about whether or not we needed a Christmas tree if we weren’t actually going to be here on Christmas Day, to which I replied in no uncertain terms that we most certainly fucking did, and he suggested that if we had to have a tree, maybe just a very small tree would do, and I shouted muchly about Scrooges and Grinches and WANTING A PROPER FUCKING TREE, while he muttered about mental wives and something about ‘a bit much’ and looked with suspicious longing at the trap door to the attic. We got the proper tree. Of course we got the proper tree, because I am a Tree Nazi, and is it even Christmas without a proper tree?

  Simon is also being a smuggety smug smug fucker and reminding me every twenty minutes or so that he has already accomplished all the things on his Christmas To Do list, including wrappin
g the presents he was to buy. Twat. I bet he’s wrapped them badly. He keeps smirking at me and saying, ‘I don’t know why you always make such a fuss, darling, it’s really not that hard.’

  In addition to this, I have had Jessica emailing me every twenty minutes, trying to persuade me that we should go halvers on a NutriBullet as a present for Mum and Geoffrey, by which she means she wants me to buy it, wrap it and then hand it to her to give to Mum while murmuring something about it being from both of us, but actually taking all the credit herself. I’m not sure why Jessica feels it so necessary to go halves on this bastarding NutriBullet, as she earns approximately eleventy billion pounds a year, so could easily afford to buy Mum and Geoffrey a dozen NutriBullets without blinking, but she has a bee in her bonnet. I’m assuming it’s either because she can’t be arsed full stop and so wants me to do the work, or she just can’t be arsed going into a shop and so wants me to use my Amazon Prime account so she can smugly continue to tell people how she has never bought anything from Amazon and only supports small, local, artisanal businesses. I don’t even know if Mum and Geoffrey WANT a NutriBullet – if I gave Mum one from me, I would almost certainly get a tart comment about did I realise that she did still have all her own teeth, but if St Jessica of Smugdom is involved then she will probably accept it graciously. I am also trying to buy thoughtful and meaningful gifts for people instead of just giving into temptation and throwing money at the problem now I am slightly more flush. That is Not the Point of Christmas.

  Oh, and fuckety twatsticks! I have just realised while looking for NutriBullets on Amazon, that the few things I have managed to do, which is dispatching my mother-in-law’s present, might be a bit of a faux pas, in that I have sent the pug-obsessed Sylvia the same pug cushion that I sent her a couple of years ago. I thought it might cheer her up as a tribute to her late and much-lamented pug Napoleon Bonapug, who after many years of terrorising soft toys with his voracious sexual appetites, was sadly found cold in his basket one morning. There was a shocked-looking teddy bear in the basket beside him, which did give Sylvia some comfort that he had probably passed away while indulging in his favourite pastime. I suspect that while she might have taken one pug cushion as well-meaning, a second might be rubbing salt in the wound. Also, ever since Sylvia had a Damascene moment over the wonders of eBay, she has been increasingly difficult to buy anything for, as every day is Christmas for Sylvia – a constant convoy of exhausted couriers wends its way to her French retirement villa, while Sylvia quaffs pink sunshine wine on the terrace and opens each box with cries of glee, exclaiming, ‘I don’t even remember bidding for this, such fun! Michael, darling, look! Another one of these. Where shall we put this one?’ and Simon’s poor father mutters, ‘It’s not distressed, Sylvia. It’s a piece of tat is what is it is. Distressed is what I am over you wasting more money and no, you DIDN’T “win” it. YOU BOUGHT IT. How can I get it through to you that buying things on eBay costs MONEY? YOU HAVE NOT BEATEN THE SYSTEM NOR WON FUCK ALL. Oh, I don’t know. Put it in the spare room.’