by Gill Sims
Saturday, 31 December/Sunday, 1 January
Long gone are the days when New Year’s Eve used to mean getting dressed up, trowelling on the slap and going out to get disgracefully, obscenely drunk before kissing a plethora of strangers in the street. In our misspent student days, Simon, Hannah, Charlie and I had several riotous and badly behaved Hogmanays in Edinburgh (well, mine were riotous and badly behaved, and I recall Simon also being fairly uproarious, including his decision to drop his trousers on the Royal Mile one year, which led to him complaining he thought he’d got frostbite on his balls. Hannah and Charlie pointed out that they tended to have been slightly better behaved than us), but over the years, the desire to bring in the New Year by mingling with others has waned somewhat. I did try having a proper New Year’s Eve party a couple of years ago, but that only had the effect of making me hate pretty much everyone I knew until Easter.
This time, therefore, we decided it would be nice to just have a few carefully selected friends round, and we could all put on our pyjamas, plug our darling children into the electronic babysitters and stuff our faces to our elasticated waists’ content on M&S canapés and get mildly puggled while setting the world to rights. Thus it was that Hannah and Charlie, Katie and her nice but dull husband Tim, and Sam came over, complete with assorted moppets and a selection of comfortable slippers and vol-au-vents, and we commenced on New Year’s Eve for the Middle-Aged.
Sam, made bold by the knowledge that I had rashly offered to have all the children stay over (except Katie’s two, as they are small enough to a) need taking to the toilet and I don’t do wiping other people’s children’s bums and b) be scooped up and carried back over the road to bed when necessary), as well as put Hannah and Charlie in the spare room to save them the trouble of trying to get a taxi in the small hours of New Year’s Day (Sam himself living within a reasonable stumbling distance when unencumbered by precious moppets to escort home like a responsible adult), appeared with a bottle of what can only be described as Darkness. It was, he informed me, coffee tequila.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ I said dubiously. ‘I mean, we are supposed to be being civilised tonight. I’ve done mini sausages in Nigel Slater’s honey and mustard glaze. There are tiny hamburgers to be heated up. Are shots really advisable? The children might see!’
‘The children will know nothing,’ Sam assured me gleefully. ‘They will be too busy twatting each other in between staring slackjawed at iPads to give a shit what we are doing.’
‘Hmmm …’
In the event, the children were more interested in bursting into the sitting room every twenty minutes to demand if it was midnight yet, despite being in possession of almost every bastarding electronic device known to mankind, all of them with clocks on, until I shouted that they would go to bed NOW and not be allowed to stay up, if they did not fuck off RIGHT THIS MINUTE (obviously, I didn’t actually tell them to fuck off, but I fear they grasped the sentiment that was definitely there).
Nonetheless, we did manage to have a very pleasant and almost adult evening, despite the wretched glaze for the mini sausages welding itself onto a perfectly good Le Creuset pot for all eternity, and Simon’s blatant disregard of me telling him that the sausages were hot and to let them cool down first, instead shoving a nugget of molten pork into his mouth and then screaming that it was burning, burning, and spitting it out, only for my poor dog to pounce and gobble it up and find the same thing. Apparently, being more concerned about my precious pupsicle’s burnt tongue than my soulmate’s was not the act of a kind and loving wife.
By midnight, all the children were at a fever pitch of excitement, except Katie’s two – Ruby had fallen asleep behind the sofa and Lily had succumbed under Jane’s desk. We dutifully counted down with Jools Holland, and then shouted, ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR!!’
‘Is that it?’ said Jane, in disappointment. ‘I thought it would feel different, the start of a whole new year. I thought I would feel different. Everything is exactly the same. This is rubbish!’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s pretty much how New Year goes, darling.’
‘Hurrumph!’ said Jane, then, brightening, ‘But seeing as I’m a whole year older, Mummy, maybe you’ll let me have an Instagram account now.’
‘You’re not a whole year older,’ I pointed out. ‘You’re about five minutes older. And so no, still no Instagram account.’
‘OMG! So much for “New Year, New You”!’ whined Jane. ‘You are just as mean as the Old You was. It’s SO UNFAIR!’
‘Jane,’ I said firmly. ‘It is a fresh new year, you are quite right. And so I don’t want to begin it by having the SAME ARGUMENT WITH YOU ABOUT INSTAGRAM THAT I SPENT ALL LAST YEAR HAVING. Are we clear?’
‘Yes,’ said Jane indignantly. ‘It is very clear that your main aim for this year is to RUIN MY LIFE! VERY, VERY CLEAR!’
The only consolation was that I could hear Hannah and Sam having exactly the same arguments with Emily and Sophie, which led me to suspect that the girls had planned this onslaught to catch us at a moment of emotional weakness. I could also hear some sort of row between Simon and Charlie, and Peter, Lucas and Toby about why they were not allowed a beer to toast the New Year. None of this boded well for the year ahead, I felt.
Once the children had been dispatched to some semblance of settling down to go to sleep, still grumbling over our unreasonable insistence on protecting them from paedophiles and underage alcoholism, and Tim and Katie had ruefully departed back across the road, small children bundled beneath their arms, and I had had a brief scroll through all the ‘Happy New Year’ texts and a quick look at Facebook to confirm that everyone was at a better party than me, and squinted at a very random photo that Alan had sent that seemed to involve him trying to push a party popper up his nose, and wondered if I should text him back suggesting that that was probably a bad idea, Sam produced his Bottle of Doom.
‘Let’s just have a little shot to toast the New Year, eh?’ he wheedled.
‘Oh, go on then,’ we said eventually. ‘Just one!’
So. The thing with coffee tequila is that it doesn’t actually taste like tequila. It tastes rather lovely, like a slightly turbocharged shot of Tia Maria, which as everyone knows barely even counts as alcohol, much like Baileys. And so really, you think, what’s the harm in having another one? And another one. An’ nuvver one. And the other thing with coffee tequila is that, much like the grim nineties’ combo of vodka and Red Bull, although it gets you shitfaced, it also gives you a caffeine blast so that you stay awake and continue to make a tit of yourself long after a normal drink would just have caused you pass out while still in possession of some small amount of decorum … Thus it is best that a veil should probably be drawn over the rest of the night, sufficing it only to say that there was dancing and singing and possibly a heartrending, tearstained and emotional rendition of ‘How Much Is That Doggy in the Window’ from me, dramatically clutching my disgusted and horrified dog to my bosom as I wept in his ear at the thought of the poor, unloved Doggy in the Window.
JANUARY
Sunday, 1 January
Euuurrrgh. Today has been, to say the least, painful. I was woken up by the small boys thundering downstairs at 7 a.m., and realising that since I had other people’s children in the house, someone should probably put in an appearance and pretend to be a responsible adult. I gave Simon a kick.
‘Mmmophhhh!’ mumbled Simon, rolling over and pulling a pillow over his head.
‘The boys are up,’ I hissed. ‘You should go and make them breakfast.’
‘Nophoff!’ came the groan from his side of the bed, which I think meant, ‘No, fuck off!’
As Simon is blessed with that male ability to sleep soundly even when his beloved offspring are roaming below, potentially stabbing themselves/each other/the postman, and I, being but a weak and feeble woman, am jolted into consciousness at every squeak, squawk or squeal that might possibly have come from said offspring, I sighed, and heaved myself
out of bed.
Vertical was bad. Vertical was very, very bad. Coffee tequila was most certainly no longer my friend. I couldn’t quite believe I had been insane enough to book myself into something hideous called a ‘Boot Camp Fitness’ class this morning, feeling that I was now a grown-up and healthy person. There was no way I could go to such a thing. I could barely stand up straight without vomiting, let alone contemplate burpees! I tottered down the landing and met Hannah coming out of the spare room, looking nearly as bad as I felt. Behind her, a fully dressed Charlie snored loudly, sprawled on top of the bedcovers. We regarded ourselves in the mirror at the top of the stairs with some dismay.
‘FML!’ whispered Hannah. ‘If I was a dog that felt this bad, someone would put me out of my misery!’
Downstairs, Sam was snoring equally loudly on the sofa. Someone had thoughtfully placed a blanket over him. I had a vague flashback that it might have been me, as I recalled being very confused by trying to entirely cover Sam with the blanket because when I pulled it up to his shoulder, his feet were sticking out, but if I pulled it over his feet, his shoulders were uncovered, and I had spent some time trying to work out a solution to this baffling problem, before hitting on the genius plan of if only I could whisk the blanket into place fast enough, then I would have solved the dilemma. I hadn’t, obviously.
I prodded Sam. He made a very unattractive noise and stretched out a supplicating hand.
‘Coffee!’ he rasped. ‘For the love of God, a cup of coffee!’
‘Get up,’ I said unsympathetically. ‘This was your damn coffee tequila that did this in the first place!’
In the kitchen, the boys had distributed what looked like the best part of an entire packet of Coco Pops (family size) in equal quantities between three bowls, every worktop in the kitchen, and the floor, and were now engaged in carefully slopping milk onto any surface that had not received its full quota of Coco Pops.
I attempted to lift the kettle to make healing tea, while Hannah and Sam huddled at the table, whimpering in pain.
Jane and the other girls appeared in the kitchen and looked around in disgust.
‘Why do you all look so awful?’ Jane demanded.
‘I think maybe I’m coming down with a bug,’ I whispered bravely.
‘I think you’re hungover,’ said Jane unkindly. ‘Really, Mother! You are not a good example to us, you know.’
‘No,’ winced Sam. ‘But hopefully we will at least stand as a terrible warning.’
Later, the pain still showing no sign of subsiding, but having managed to dispatch all my houseguests, both expected and unexpected, I rallied the remains of my strength to make a New Year’s Day roast dinner for Daddy and Natalia, as I had invited them over in a fit of weakness and guilt about going to Mum’s for Christmas and abandoning them.
I felt rather less guilty when they turned up both looking sickeningly tanned after spending Christmas in Antigua (‘Well, darling, with both you and Jessica with your mother, there didn’t seem much point in us sitting round here waiting for you to get back,’ said Daddy. ‘You should try it, Ellen. It’s amazing the difference even just a few days of sun in the middle of winter can make,’ purred Natalia. Bastards. Both of them. I wasn’t at all envious of their sunshine break, as opposed to my own festive season attempting to catch the Spawn of Sarah while they quaffed cocktails by the pool, and now I was stuck trying not to puke in the Yorkshire puddings with the WORST HANGOVER OF MY LIFE, all because I had felt bad about not spending Christmas with them).
Never had I been so grateful for Peter’s overriding dedication to food, as he busied himself with trying to see how much trifle he could fit in his mouth at once, while Natalia watched in fascinated horror.
‘Is he always like this?’ she breathed nervously.
‘Yes,’ I said despairingly.
‘It’s just one of the reasons why having a brother is RUBBISH,’ said Jane. ‘No one should have to have a brother. Brothers are disgusting. I wish I was an only child.’
Peter screamed, ‘No one should have to have a sister. Sisters are horrible. I HATE having a sister! I want to SELL her but no one will let me. Sisters are much worse than brothers, and Jane is the meanest bumhead poopants I HAVE EVER MET!’
Simon, slumped at the end of the table, lost in his own world of coffee tequila-induced pain, opened one bloodshot eye and said, ‘What? What’s going on? Why is everyone shouting? Oh, my poor head!’
Finally, once Peter and Jane had been separated, still spitting and hissing at each other like angry cats, and the dog had quietly finished up the remains of the trifle when no one was looking and then vomited it over Natalia’s suede boot, and I had apologised all over again (while wondering why the fuck she keeps wearing such swanky stuff here. Surely she has realised that my house is a living example of Why We Can’t Have Nice Things), and some semblance of order had been restored, and I had hidden in the larder for a quiet lie down for five minutes, resting my head on the cool, soothing tiles of the floor, it was finally time to wave them off.
‘Why do you think she married him?’ I asked Simon afterwards. ‘Jessica thinks she wants a baby.’
‘Oh God, I feel ill. I wonder if a beer would help?’ groaned Simon.
‘But what about Natalia and a baby?’
‘She doesn’t want a baby.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh fuck, this beer is not helping at all. I wonder if I’m going to be sick. Well, not everyone wants babies, do they? And she’s not exactly a spring chicken, is she?’
‘She could still have a baby. I could still have a baby, come to that!’
Simon turned pale, an impressive feat given he was already ashen with his hangover. ‘You don’t want another baby, do you?’ he said in dismay. ‘All that business with Sarah hasn’t made you broody, has it? Is that why you’re suddenly obsessed with Natalia having a baby? Because really, it’s you who wants one?’
I turned equally pale. ‘Oh dear God, NO! Christ on a fucking bike, even had I been broody, which I most certainly am not, witnessing Sarah giving birth would have been enough to put anyone off. Peter and Jane are almost becoming civilised (admittedly only by their own idiosyncratic standards). I can’t think of anything worse! In fact, after all that with Sarah, I was going to suggest we book you in for the snip. We don’t have time for each other or the children we have, let alone a baby!’
Simon, although breathing a sigh of relief, immediately looked mutinous and started muttering that no one was putting a knife anywhere near his knob.
Friday, 13 January
Despite failing to attend the New Year’s Boot Camp, I have been attempting to stick to a healthy-eating kick. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I LIKE kale and quinoa, but I have eaten worse things. At least, I’m sure I must have. There was an unfortunate episode when I was misguided enough to eat something appalling in the form of a Brussels sprout salad for lunch, which led to me farting like a dray horse all afternoon, and obviously denying it, to the point where Lydia was insisting that we needed to get the maintenance team in to check there wasn’t a dead rat in the ventilation system, while I staunchly denied being able to smell anything and insisted they were all imagining it (it was pretty bad. Worse than some of Peter’s, and his arse is septic).
The Big Project is finished, hurrah, and so we went out and got absolutely shitfaced last Friday, and at one point in the night Alan sidled up to me to ask if he had sent me any photos at New Year, as he had apparently sent some ‘unfortunate ones’ before dropping his phone down the bog and killing it. By ‘unfortunate photos’ I assume he meant dick pics, as he looked profoundly relieved when I showed him the photo of him trying to put a party popper up his nose. I am not sure if I am pleased Alan respects me enough not to send me dick pics, or cross that he thinks me too old and haggard to bother sending dick pics to. I’m convincing myself it is the former. As a reward for finishing the Big Project on time, we have been given an even Bigger and more Important Project, sinc
e we managed not to fuck the last one up. So, no pressure.
Talking of no pressure, I don’t know how much longer I can keep working these hours. The last push to get things done was tough, and reduced Simon to a snarling weasel of fury at having to pick up the kids more than he perceived as ‘his’ share. Since he is already in a foul mood with me, I decided in for a penny, in for a pound, and announced I was going out with Hannah and Sam tonight, while he complained about babysitting, and I reminded him once again that you can’t actually babysit your own children. It’s called parenting.
‘I think this is the first time you’ve ever managed to stick to a health-and-fitness kick, Ellen,’ said Hannah in surprise. ‘You’ve literally been doing this every year since you were fifteen and you’ve never lasted more than two days, EVER!’
‘I just wish there was a diet where you could live on pies and get thin!’ I said sadly, sipping unenthusiastically at my vodka, soda and fresh lime, instead of delicious wine. ‘I mean, imagine the fortune the person who came up with that diet could make. The Pie Yourself Thin Diet! Maybe this is my calling. Maybe this is how I will become rich and famous. Fuck off, Joe Wicks! Ellen Russell and the Pie Diet is the latest hot new trend. I can just see my cookbooks in the supermarkets now. Me on the cover, showing off my abs, holding a big, delicious pork pie. Maybe Greggs would sponsor it.’
‘Or maybe it’s never actually going to happen,’ scoffed Sam. ‘What with a) you have no nutritional training at all and b) it not being possible to lose weight while stuffing your face with pies.’