Bottles of wine belonging to ‘Mr J Sampson’ currently hidden in my stair cupboard under the guide of ‘waiting for me to call and get it sorted’ – 12.
Whose idea were bank holidays? What are they even for? People who work in banks don’t need more rest than normal people do they? Bank holidays, like a lot of things – weekends generally, pubs, restaurants, sense of self – change a lot when you have children.
When I was in my early twenties, bank holidays just meant you got to go out on Sunday nights without the worry of being sick in your handbag on the tube on the way to work the next day. Bank holidays were like finding a ten-pound note on the floor, with no one else around who could have dropped it. They were like a case of wine left at your house by mistake by one of those mail order wine companies, without a signature, so really, what can you do but take it quickly inside?
(Definitely haven’t done that.)
Bank holidays when you have children are more like when you go to take a sip of wine and realise the glass is empty or finish a big load of washing up and then find four coffee mugs, two cereal bowls and a week-old lasagne dish in your bedroom.
(Honestly, who on earth would take half a leftover lasagne to bed with them? Outrageous.)
It’s like a normal weekend, full of uneaten Marmite sandwiches and too much unchaperoned Netflix and then boom, you have to do one of the days all over again, only things aren’t properly open, and all the things that are open are full of equally despondent-looking parents and their hyperactive children.
It’s just a joy.
Lou has been banging on for ages about her Mooncup, which is apparently an environmentally friendly tampon alternative that she says can reduce cramps, so I went out from work to Boots at lunchtime to have a look. I can see the logic from the whole waste angle, but also I’m sick of starting my period every month, having forgotten to buy tampons and having to wrap a streamer of toilet paper around my pants while I go to Tesco Express. Also, Flo started her periods last year and I want to be able to offer her alternatives to pads at some stage.
The Mooncup comes in two sizes, which was a bit disconcerting. Obviously I couldn’t buy the ‘young and child-free with your whole life ahead of you’ size, so I had to go for the very kindly named ‘size A’ for women who are over thirty or who have had a vaginal birth. Basically, a sort of sink plunger.
I had a go with it when I got home but couldn’t quite get the art of ‘pre-insertion folding’ and it kept springing back into shape at all the wrong moments.
Jess woke me up two in the morning by getting into bed with me. Her eyes were wide and she was all warm and fuzzy from sleep.
‘I had a bad dream,’ she said, nuzzling into my armpit. Rather her than me.
‘I’m sorry to hear that, sweetie,’ I said, stroking her back. ‘What was your dream about?’
‘It was about a robot,’ she said, ‘but it was a mean robot, and he kept trying to punch you. But he was made of cake and there was cream all over you.’
‘You had a dream about a mean cake robot? That doesn’t sound fun.’ But she was asleep again already. I drew my legs up and made a nest around her.
Plans were made for Saturday night at Busy Beavers. As in we made the plans at Busy Beavers, we aren’t having our night out there, that would be a bit desperate. I’m going to make some dinner at my house so we can preload on prosecco.
Then we’ll go to a few bars, ‘hit up a club’, (pretty sure that’s the expression), clear the dance floor with our cool moves, and then I’ll quite probably meet the man of my dreams. Bob’s your uncle.
It’s a foolproof plan.
Pre-taxi glasses of prosecco – 5. (Too many on reflection.) Dubious dance moves performed with age-inappropriate men – probably best we don’t think about it.
Ian had offered to swap weekends so that the girls could be home on my birthday, but, quite honestly, it was kind of nice waking up on my own. I lay in bed reading and drinking tea for a little while, ate smoked salmon bagels in the bath, and generally swanned about feeling very decadent and old, but in a nice way.
At six o’clock Sierra and Lou arrived on a cloud of expensive-smelling perfume looking properly tarted-up. I’d made a big bolognese for dinner (pasta to line stomachs), Sierra had brought two bottles of prosecco and Lou had a fruit salad.
‘It’s not a family reunion BBQ,’ said Sierra, pouring her a drink. ‘Why the chuff have you brought a fruit salad?’
‘There is actually some research that shows that fructose speeds up metabolism of alcohol,’ said Lou, ‘thus reducing the impact of a hangover. Also, last weekend I bought two different types of melon because the boys said it was their very favourite food of all time and now they’re denying all knowledge of ever having been able to so much as look at a melon without crying. So just eat the melon and be grateful.’
Melon was actually pretty tasty with prosecco. Probably a very classy cocktail, in fact. Although probably normally made with melon purée rather than just putting a lump of melon in your mouth and then taking a big gulp of your drink.
Juice. Gah! Please send juice. And bacon sandwiches. Help.
I’m definitely never drinking prosecco again.
Rolled out of bed at three in the afternoon and crawled to the bathroom. Climbed into the bath and ran the shower over me while I had a little lie down.
I don’t think I even drunk that much. I swear when I was twenty-two I used to be able to drink twice as much and then be in the pub at ten the next morning, eating poached eggs and drinking bloody Marys. Oh God! Shouldn’t have thought about poached eggs. Bleurgh.
Aside from physically feeling like death in a pair of stained pyjamas, Lou was right: the night out did really help. I think I’ve been sitting on all these feelings about Cam for so long that I’d lost perspective. The only people I’ve ever properly talked to about him are people who know him or knew us together. Telling the stories all over again to Sierra and Lou, and seeing their reaction, made me think about a lot of things in a new way. Stuff that seemed romantic or tragic at the time just sounded shitty. Perhaps I really just have grown up in the last ten years? It doesn’t often feel like it, but I guess it’s inevitable.
Managed to be dressed and sitting on the sofa when Ian brought the girls home. We used the voucher that I had stuck to the fridge to get 2-for-1 takeaway pizza and the three of us sat on the sofa together and watched Lilo & Stitch. Jess fell asleep with her head on my lap, leaving greasy cheese stains on my jeans with her sweaty hands. Flo stroked her hair.
‘She’s cute when she’s asleep, isn’t she?’ said Flo.
‘So are you,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I watch you before I go to bed and you do that cute little snuffly snore you used to do when you’re small.’
‘You watch me sleep?’ she said. ‘That’s so creepy.’ But she looked pleased.