MOTHER’S DAY
It’s the last one when both girls are living at home. Next year when ELDEST has gone to university, I will be a semi-unemployed mother, a mother who has been offered what feels like early retirement without actually wanting to retire at all, ever, from the role of motherhood. I remember her smell as a baby, the little vest I took with me on a business trip because it smelled of her; I used it to get myself off to sleep.
Both girls have worked together to bring me up a boiled egg and some toast, with a flower and a card. We’ve moved on from home-made tissue holders made from egg boxes, and jewellery cases made from old toilet-roll holders, lamentably. But they give me two lovely cards…yet more things to go in my memory box. To be a mother of daughters is ecstatically wonderful, and excruciatingly hard. It doesn’t seem fair that I’m the one that made most of the sacrifices (see stretch marks, flabby tummy and the misery that is being a working mother) and it’s Dad that is the apple of their eyes. With me it’s more complicated, I sort of know them too deeply. With mothers and daughters it’s all about patterns, you work yourself ragged running a house, and she turns into hang-it-all-out, chill-out organic housewife and mother with a house full of clutter and plenty of quality time with the kids. Then her daughters will probably do the entire opposite. One thing we’re all stuck with is the kind of bond between mother and child that saw women whose children were taken away in the concentration camps actually die of broken hearts.
Mother-in-law calls to thank GRUMPY OLD MAN for the lovely flowers. What a beautiful arrangement he’d organised this year. Didn’t like to tell her that it was me not adoring son that had organised it. Felt a teeny bit sorry for her…
I get ready for bed with a heavy heart. Notice the pile of earrings on my dressing table where I have lost one of a pair…Interestingly, you never lose the ones you don’t like much, only the ones you cherish.
March 28th
YOUNGEST calls me at work to ask me where I put her cookery basket, she needs it now. It couldn’t just be that she lost it, or can’t find it, it is me who has put it somewhere, apparently. Everything is my fault it seems.
March 29th
Monthly away day at work. The agenda is the usual large chunk of your life that you are not going to get back, with nothing achieved or learned:
You know that you are going to stare at the word ‘close’ all day, long for it, look out of the window and long to be able to run outside and get the wind in your hair or just some fresh air, because the blue sky thinking and open forums and thinking outside the box will just do your head in because the truth is that you just think it’s a total waste of money. It’s like all the meetings at work all the time, but one long all-day meeting without a break, without even a chance to nip out and do an errand, and the worst thing is that your real work just mounts up all day as a result. Nothing gets ticked off the list; worse, things get added to it all day. Except curiously the things that get added to it are kind of vague like my ten best ideas to Joe in London by next month, or send monthly updates to whole department. The kind of things that you know won’t go anywhere, won’t amount to anything much.
My presentation gets shunted to after lunch. So that means I have the whole morning to be distracted by the anxiety of it. Despite the fact that I regularly stand up in front of deputations at other companies, because that is my job, standing up in front of my colleagues and boss is infinitely more nerve-racking. I get the silly upset stomach, have it all written out on tragic index cards and underlined bits, go to the loo and say it aloud and it sounds silly like I’m a kid and this is the sort of thing grown-ups do, not me.
I start my presentation and everyone is desperately fighting yawns, there are still two forums to do before the magical much wanted ‘close’. What I have to say about managing chaos could be written on a side of A4, OK a post-it note, OK a small post-it note (maybe not one of the little teeny ones you use to mark the page you’re on), but much to everyone’s surprise I say so. ‘I don’t use the Powerpoint thing because we’ve been on that all morning and really who wants to see a visual of a pie chart or a percentage comparison when you can say it in words and have just the same effect. And, guess what, we can all read, so what’s the point of showing us a slide with a lot of writing on that you then read out?’
That’s one good thing about getting older, you can start to say what you really think, you can put your head above the parapet, you don’t care so much what people think of you so you tell it like it is. Managing chaos is all very well, but chaos takes you by surprise; by definition, if you were expecting it then it wouldn’t be chaos. So there’s not a fat lot you can do to prepare for it, really, other than keep your head and try not to overreact.
I more or less say that. Take about five minutes to say it and everyone looks relieved, actually rather impressed. Fortunately no one was aware that the press-studs holding my undercarriage together pinged open when I picked my pen up from the floor at the beginning and the-all-in-one has been riding up ever since. Ended up partially above the waistband on my skirt, ruched and ruffled up like a horrid Austrian blind for all to see. Good job I wasn’t wearing the kind of beach wear my younger colleagues at work do.
March 30th
The tax year is coming to an end so the dreaded accountant has to be seen. As usual I fail to do the wretched thing on-line myself and end up paying him to do it for me. His office is old-fashioned, like a time warp out of the 1960s, a lot of shelves with A4 ring files on, some dusty grey filing cabinets and electric fires on the walls. Not exactly state of the art…The sort of office where everyone has their own mug, a biscuit kitty, probably a mug tree in the kitchen wouldn’t wonder…My accountant has, I imagine, been there for a very long time. We sit down in his office and he has all the figures in front of him, and a list of queries a mile long, and starts boring me rigid talking about PEPs and ISAs and SIPPs and does a lot of underlinings on a pad and circling things – something about calendar years and tax years and fiscal risk. I can honestly say that it’s like being in double maths on a Friday afternoon.
Something scary happens. I find myself fancying him. Which is ridiculous. If you saw my accountant you’d see what I mean: lovely man, but he has a Disney tie on, fly-away grey hair and is so near retirement age he’s probably allowed to take every Friday off. The silly fancying thought is just a way of me not listening to all the tedious things he is trying to tell me, but it doesn’t go away. I start to fantasise about what would happen if I just leaned over the table and snogged him. Which is a preposterous notion on many levels, not least of which I have never even when I was in my twenties and at my most attractive done anything as daring and as outrageous as snog someone without having a pretty clear idea that the snog would be welcome, but the thought doesn’t go away. I start to think about using him as my sex slave. He’d be grateful, let’s be honest.
Grateful to the point of astonished, would probably do some really daft things, not go in to work for days on end, hang around me, stalk me. I’d just have to say I like Chanel No.19 and he’d send me a bottle every day, say I shop at Poundstretcher and he’d lurk around there all day on the off chance of catching a glimpse of me. He’d get himself kitted out with contact lenses, and his wife and grown-up children would be baffled but wouldn’t guess the reason. He’d go to the doctor and get some Viagra, hide it in the car and be keen to give me full-on sex all night every night. Think I am going bonkers, pull myself together and start trying to listen again.
He gives me a great big telling off about keeping my records in order, the sort of telling-off he gives me every March when his poor staff have had to correct my appalling attempts at filling in the tax return. I go away and start afresh with some labelled shoe boxes, one to put my petrol receipts in, which will last until the next busy period at work. I leave and he is thankfully oblivious to the crush I have developed on him. Maybe we’ll elope together, except he’d talk about hedge funds and then I’d get bored and wish I’d sta
yed with my nice husband.
Am going to have to ask bitch doctor about these HRT pills. What is becoming of me?
March 31st
Decide to have a really good clear-out. The sun is shining and it lifts my spirits. The daffodils are out and I tackle the spare room, the shed and the garage, decide to chuck out loads of things that are cluttering up my life, things I haven’t used in years. Astonishing how much rubbish you collect that you simply don’t need any more. Five bags for the charity shop and a car full – and how! – to go to the tip. I load the car up with bin bags, take two seats out of the back and really have a good clear-out, bag up some garden rubbish too. I spend the whole day on it, really wear myself out. Load it all up and drive to the tip. Feeling purged, feeling as if I’m really achieving something like ticking off everything on five ‘to do’ lists all at once, a whole week’s worth in one day, which means I’m in front, I’m ‘straight’, got the lists licked, get to the tip and it looks surprisingly quiet.
Barrier down. Closes at 3.30 on a Sunday. Bastards. Now I have to drive back with a car full of crap which I notice is smelling of creosote and mouldy damp carpet that has been sitting by the dustbin for a couple of years minimum, and what’s really depressing is that I have to unload it because need the car for school tomorrow. That’s not fair. That’s negative ‘to do’ lists with knobs on. That’s really really depressing. Get home. Eat chocolate biscuits.
∨ The Secret Diary of a Grumpy Old Woman ∧
April
April 2nd
Am spending far too much time at the mirror. I complain that the girls do this, but I’m starting to be as bad. It strikes me that being middle-aged, going through the midlife crisis so-called, is a bit like being an adolescent – you don’t fit in anywhere. Or maybe it’s part of the regression towards old age, back to dribbling and a bib and a beaker for your tea in the morning. Thinking about it – numerically this means that I must have regressed further back than adolescence – it’s more like being back to the terrible toddler years. I reckon my real regressed type age is about three now and in fact this makes a lot of sense. It would explain all my temper tantrums and rapid mood swings. I’m having trouble with some everyday words, find it hard to remember them, or get them mixed up, calling the cheese grater the chopping board, or the lawnmower the wheelbarrow, I struggle to think of a particular word like ‘haphazard’ and have to paraphrase it when I can’t find it…So, in fact, now the flash cards I stuck on everyday things when the girls were toddlers would be an idea for me – one that says ‘table’ on the kitchen table, ‘bed’ on the bed and ‘window’ on the window-pane. It might get out of hand though, I would come to rely on the flash cards, put them on everything like ‘my house’, ‘my car’, ‘my bunions’. See how it is all sounding like nursery school?
This return to being a toddler also explains my attention-seeking behaviour, like putting purple streaks in my hair, wearing silly bright green coats and my Dr Who multicoloured scarf, big hats and dangly earrings, which are all ‘hey look at me, I’m still fun-type statements. Toddlers also need a rest after lunch, which I now do but am not able to take one, making me overtired, fractious and difficult. I don’t sleep through the night any more – except, unlike with real toddlers, there is no one to scream at who will get up, give me a cuddle, sing me a song and lull me back to sleep. Maybe all this grump and strop and letting loose on shop assistants who do not serve me within two seconds is one big toddler tantrum. My whole life is one big toddler tantrum. And I could use an afternoon nap in the creche at work myself, I could use a training beaker for my wine of an evening, I could loll on the sofa watching the telly and it wouldn’t drip down my front. Also one of those nice rubber spill-proof dishes for my mashed-up food would mean I could eat in bed, which is where I would really like to spend most of my day. It’s all slotting into place…except toddlers don’t have chin stubble or have to sort the washing into piles.
April 3rd
Standing by coffee station at work and felt completely odd. Like someone had just plugged me into the mains, or a fireball of napalm had rolled down the corridor and was about to engulf me. ‘Don’t you all feel a bit hot?’ I said, but instead of rushing for the fire extinguisher or running away from said napalm fire ball, they all looked a bit sheepish and started to check their emails again. Like they don’t do that every ten seconds all day and every day as it is! They had to pretend I hadn’t said it because – gosh it was so obvious to them and so not obvious to me – this was my first proper out-in-the-open, in-public hot flush, but unlike any other sexual rite of passage like your first period or your first boyfriend, things to blag to your mates about, to rush about texting your friends, this was the sort of sexual marker best left unmarked, unmentioned and unrecognised. Ignoring a hot flush, though, when you’re having one, is not that easy. I mean you can’t exactly plunge yourself into a bucket of cold water, which would seem to be the only instant cure, or strip to tne waist…that might be taking attention-seeking too far. Put hot flush on the mood chart for the doctor, along with ONE BIG LONG PERIOD scrawled across the week, in case she doesn’t pick that up. I’m having one big long dose of pre-menstrual tension from one end of the month to the other. Which is another way of saying one minute I am in a reasonably rational mood and the next I am a seething mass, hysterical bitch making a fuss, or pulling a face or being sarcastic to people doing their job or going about their business. Like the stupid moan I had to the supermarket manager saying, ‘Don’t you think it would be nice to employ some people in this supermarket that know what some of your products actually are?’ The sort of woman who points sarcastically at the notice at the end of the carriage in the train which has a mobile phone on and a sign saying, Please use with consideration for your fellow passengers. The one that apparently no one else has read.
Because everyone is making stupid calls to people about the dreariest of subjects. How come everyone else seems to have so much more time to kill than I do? On and on and on they drone about what they’re wearing on Saturday and what they’ve been doing all day. The kind of conversations that always end with ‘Love you…love you’. I just can’t let anything lie, anything go, any more, and of course because nothing much embarrasses me any more, there’s no stopping me making a fuss.
April 6th
Counted five people using their mobiles on way in to work, two of them lorry drivers; tried to take down their numbers but was difficult while driving.
April 7th
Just as ELDEST is about to leave home, GRUMPY OLD MAN is talking about taking early retirement, which is all very well but the net result will be that yours truly might end up being main breadwinner, shit and help, and GOM will be around the house a lot more. Don’t know which worries me more. The truth is that, while he is away 8am-7pm five days a week, he is forgiven (a little bit anyway) for not putting the new loo roll on the holder, only taking the laundry basket down when asked and generally making a dog’s dinner of anything I asked him to do around the house. But with him at home – then what? I bet I will come home after winning bread to find laundry still in wash basket, no food made, the dishwasher full of clean dishes still, and he’ll be sorting out the family holiday album from 1988. None of the little jobs (as my mother would have put it) that I left out on a list by the kitchen phone will have been done, and he’ll be having a nice time. I sense that he will find the newfound freedom exhilarating whereas, during the dollops of time I had at home to look after babies, I was either going to mums and toddlers and listening to other mothers drone on about pram designs or the nearly new sale in order to get my children friends, or I was mopping up sick, or watching Rosie and Jim videos while nursing them through chickenpox. He’ll probably be on Sky Sports all afternoon.
He’s started to self-delude. As in thinks he is young and hip again. Started playing Coldplay and James Blunt and showing off to the girls about the latest Bono. They look absurdly impressed and maddeningly start to take him a little bit serio
usly. Any fool can see that the man is a fraud. Underneath he is one of Alan Freeman’s pop pickers. Sometimes little things drop out of his mouth that he can’t control, like ELDEST talks about Eminem and he thinks it’s a chocolate, which is a reality check…brings him back to his real age…I caught him talking to them about the hit parade yesterday. Back of the net.
April 9th
GOM has persuaded me to buy a Blackberry. Which until recently I thought was something you picked in September and then made crumbles with, but apparently it’s the thing to have gadget wise – and will impress colleagues at work. You can access your emails anywhere, and put all your addresses and important dates in bla bla bla…I am so completely hopeless about technological things I regularly point the mobile at the telly, but OLD MAN insists it is easy to operate. Might be for him. Will ponder.
Bird table getting interesting…lots of blue-coloured birds and a big black bully on it today. And something dappled that I suppose must be a thrush. Find myself wanting to know the names of them. Suggest I put a shorthand pad by phone so we can all note down the ones we see, and get a Ladybird bird book from Smith’s. If teenage girls could tut, their look to me would have been a tut, a trainee tut, like ‘Crikey hasn’t this woman got anything better to do?’
April 10th
Took train to London. Everyone has gone Sudoku mad. I swear two-thirds of the people on the train were doing it. I have trouble with the word Sudoku, the first time I saw it written down I read it as Soduko and now I constantly call it Soduko – can’t rewire my brain back to the right one. It’s yet another example of me turning into my mother, she had trouble with Richard Branson whom she always calls Richard Branston, and however many times I have corrected her it fails to work. It’s like the phrase ‘no brainer’ which still implies to me that someone is stupid rather than that you don’t have to think about something, it’s so obvious – I just don’t get it.
The Secret Diary of a Grumpy Old Woman Page 6