I was woken up at 5.47 this morning by Jess getting into bed next to me with the iPad to tell me she was going to watch programmes and would I like to watch with her? I said no thank you, it was a little early for me. I tried to go back to sleep but the relentless enthusiasm of Captain Barnacles was too much.
I scrolled through Instagram and found a quote that someone had published about how we only have eighteen amazing summers with our children and how we should cherish every moment.
I can’t say that it was great timing for me as I lay there, trying to think about how on earth we were going to fill the time between meals for an entire week.
As a response to the ridiculous person who posted the quote, I thought I would compile a detailed report of my day.
5.47: Arrival in bed of Jess and Captain Barnacles.
6.03: Many cries of ‘Watch it with me, Mummy!’ Assure Jess that I definitely am enjoying the underwater adventures of Captain Barnacles and his lively crew. Scroll through Instagram with phone hidden behind thigh.
6.05: ‘Mummy, you’re not watching! Put your phone away!’
6.07: Repeat two previous steps until I can take it no more and decide to get up.
6.24: Make breakfast. Forced to eat Weetos as I foolishly poured milk into the bowl I made for Jess when she had clearly stated she wanted her cereal dry in a measuring jug so that she can carry it around. Milk requested separately in the red beaker. Emotions run high when I cannot locate the red beaker but we negotiate and settle on blue with the red lid.
6.42: Start thinking about lunch.
6.51: Go in the shower while Jess ‘organises’ my underwear drawer.
7.13: Put pants back into underwear drawer. Take out ponies and Weetos.
7.25: Get Jess dressed. Try to interest her in the Boden summer dress I bought in the NCT new-to-you sale for £2. Jess keener on thick leggings, woollen jumper and Thomas the Tank Engine wellies. I show her the weather forecast and explain what thirty degrees means but she refuses to acknowledge potential heat stroke. Jess wins. I secrete dress and sandals in handbag.
7.43: Wonder how early is too early to go to the park.
7.45: Leave for park.
7.50: Return home for ponies.
7.53: Leave again for park.
7.58: Go back because Jess needs a poo.
8.25: Arrive at park. Four other parents already there. Understanding smiles as they spot the wellies. Three of them have had the forethought to brings reusable cups of coffee from home as the park café doesn’t open until 9. Very jealous having to make do with slurps of Jess’s milk.
(Note to Park Life Café – you are missing a desperate and captive audience.)
8.35: Jess very pink of cheek but in denial.
8.45: Jess runs over looking angry. ‘I saw you drinking my milk!’ Deny everything. Top beaker up from the water fountain when she isn’t looking.
8.53: Jess relents and changes into summer dress and sandals. Winter outfit does not fit back in handbag. Didn’t think that through.
9: First in queue to buy coffee. Order latte but then, like every single time I come to the park, I see the ‘cash only’ sign and realise I only have £1.83 of the required £2.50. Tired-looking mum behind me chips in the remaining 67p. Lovely sense of wartime camaraderie.
9.07: Jess engrossed in sandpit-based activity involving ponies. Start listening to a very funny podcast about periods. Jess senses my happiness, despite having her back to me, and immediately insists I push her on the swings.
9.23: I am allowed ten minutes to drink tepid coffee and listen to podcast while Jess befriends some ants.
Etc., etc., until the sweet release of death.
See yesterday.
The house is full of the smell of warm bin. No matter how many times I empty it, it still smells like someone has put a ten-day-old pile of potato peelings in the microwave.
I went to take out the food waste and recycling and the outside food waste bin was full of maggots. They seemed to be coming from inside one of the bags, so I wasn’t sure what to do with them.
Options:
In the end I went for just shutting the box again and pretending not to have noticed.
I took Jess to the library this morning.
I’d suggested it to Flo before she went as something we could do together next week, hoping to rekindle those glory days when she was still interested in life and I could get her to do the summer reading challenge.
She’d laughed, though in a cynical way. I’d pictured her as a fifty-three-year-old New York businessman planning the takeover of a small family bagel business. Someone has suggested keeping on Margaret, the seventy-two-year-old bookkeeper who can’t really see any more but everyone loves.
(Summer holidays clearly pushing me to insanity already.)
The children’s area in the library in Barnmouth is very different from the library I used to take Flo to back in London ten years ago. Then it was just a corner of the main library with rows of shelves of young adult fiction and a couple of those boxes in the shape of trains, full of tatty picture books.
Here it’s more like a soft play centre. They have those huge foam blocks for toddlers to toss around, a wigwam, some ride-on toys, a couple of chairs for the grown-ups – it’s all going on. I assume they are trying to lure in families who find the concept of reading a little dull on its own but I can’t help feeling it distracts a little bit from the actual books.
There were two boys there when we arrived who looked about four and six years old. A man – presumably dad – was sitting in the corner on his phone.
Clearly not aware of the whole ‘quiet in the library’ thing, the boys were having a great time with the toys.
‘Reuben!’ yelled the smaller one. ‘Reuben! Look at me!’ He proceeded to throw himself off a ride-on tractor and on to the scratchy library carpet. Reuben seemed unimpressed.
‘Louis!’ he yelled back ‘I’m the big boss man! Look at me!’ He put on a deep voice. ‘Hello there, I’m the boss and I hate myself!’ Not sure where that came from. Perhaps the dad is having some issues at work.
Jess gave them a stern look as we passed them. ‘We’re here to look at the books, aren’t we, Mummy?’ she said pointedly.
I did my best to ignore Reuben and Louis dashing in and out of the wigwam and driving the tractor into the shelves but I can’t say I was sorry when the dad finished his game of phone darts or whatever it was that he was doing with such concentration, and decided it was time to go. I noticed they didn’t actually take any books with them.
(Question: why are library carpets so scratchy?)
In the afternoon we went to Chapter One for our breakaway summer holiday Busy Beaver group. Possibly need to organise my corkboard a bit better to avoid library/bookshop clashes.
I’d half expected it to be just me, Lou and Sierra but twelve families turned up, making it a bit of a squeeze, if anything. Rather than have toys in the middle and chairs around the outside, like they do a Busy Beavers, I’d put all the toy and books at one end of the room and arranged seats in a cluster at the other end, near the tea and coffee. It meant that all the kids were out of the way and that when new people came in they could actually sit and talk to other parents. I’ve always found that whole ‘around the edge of the room’ thing weird at playgroups. So isolating.
Lou and I made drinks and handed around biscuits and Sierra did a brilliant job of welcoming people when they arrived and, if they were on their own, introducing them to people.
About half an hour in a nervous-looking woman with a very neat bob came and sat down next to me. ‘I can’t thank you enough for putting this on,’ she said, looking around conspiratorially, as though she was about to confess to being on the run for stealing Jaffa Cakes from the Co-op, ‘I only moved here a few months ago and I was getting a bit panicky about what I was going to do over the summer holidays. It’s just me and Billy,’ she said, nodding towards a rather sappy-looking small boy in dungarees, ‘and to tell the truth I find it pretty lonely. I wanted this to be a fresh start, but I’ve found it harder than I thought to make friends. That sounds a bit pathetic, I know. I’m Sonia, by the way.’
‘I totally get that,’ I said. ‘I’ve been here over a year now and it’s only in the last few months that I’ve felt brave enough to really make an effort to get to know people. It’s tough, putting yourself out there, so don’t beat yourself up about it.’
‘I did try the toddler music classes in the Scout hut,’ she said, ‘but it was just awful. Billy wouldn’t join in at all and I felt as though all the other parents were judging me. I ended up sitting by myself in the ring, banging a tambourine and singing ‘The Music Man’ while Billy sat in his pushchair looking at a book. It was pretty humiliating. I couldn’t bring myself to go back again. Busy Beavers isn’t too bad, but I’ve not found people to be hugely friendly – it seems a bit cliquey?’
‘There are definitely some established groups,’ I agreed, ‘and it’s always hard to break in to existing friendships.’
‘I was there the other week, though, when you stood up to Cassie over the Fruit Shoot scandal,’ she said. ‘It was incredible! I would never have dared to do something like that.’
I laughed, remembering the Fruit Shoot slam dunk. ‘To be honest I don’t think I would have dared if I had stopped to think about it,’ I said. ‘I certainly wouldn’t have done it six months ago. I don’t know if it’s age, or making friends, but there is definitely a feeling creeping up on me of starting to care less about what other people think. It’s pretty nice.’
Lou walked past then with the plate of biscuits. I stopped her and took a second chocolate digestive.
I was just finishing packing everything away when Dylan came up the stairs.
‘That was amazing!’ he said. ‘Loads of the mums came and said hello as they left and told me how much they loved the shop, including a couple who’d never been in before. One woman asked about using the room for her mindfulness classes and I took £43.92! This was such a great idea, Frankie, thank you.’
I was very relieved. I’d been a bit worried in case the noise of more than a dozen small children squabbling over a box of Duplo would put off customers.
‘We had loads more people than I expected,’ I said. ‘It turns out parents really do get desperate in the summer holidays.’
Flo came home today. I went with Ian and Jess to meet her from the bus station. I was really nervous in case she’d had a terrible time and the trip was referred back to, out of context, for years to come. I could picture it now – ‘You remember when you sent me all the way to the South of France, Mum, to do beach games because you couldn’t be bothered to look after me?’
It would be like that one time, when she was four, that she went to bed in her school uniform and kept it on for school the next day. I was on my own with her, not long after Cam had left for good, and had the worst stomach bug I have ever had. I picked her up from school just before it set in and then spent the next twelve hours in the bathroom. I had to sit on the toilet and be sick in the bath at the same time as things happened at the other end. In between times I lay on the floor, drifting in and out of sleep and crying quietly to myself.
We’ve gone over it so many times, but in Flo’s head I think I was just flipping through a magazine or something, too lazy to get her into her pyjamas.
We watched the bus pull into the depot and as soon as I saw her coming down the steps I knew it wasn’t going to be a school uniform scenario. She was beaming. Her hair had blonde flecks from the sea and the sunshine and she was covered in freckles. She bounded down the steps and ran over and hugged us all.
‘How was it?’ I asked.
‘Amazing!’ she said. ‘I need to go and get my bags and say goodbye to everyone and then I’ll be back.’
We watched as she hugged a succession of girls and boys, all of whom looked as full of life as she did, and then she bounced back, dragging her suitcase and with her sleeping bag under one arm. Ian packed everything into the boot and took her and Jess with him. I watched them drive off and waved until I couldn’t see them any more, before getting into my car and driving home.
Drank a tumbler of well-earned summer holiday prosecco and watched First Dates. I think I must be a bit of a closet romantic, as I swear I just smile the whole way through. Sometimes I cry at the end when they say how much they like each other and agree to go on a second date.
Lay in bed this morning doing a fantasy clothes shop for if I ever win the lottery. What is this current obsession with jumpsuits? I like the theory – minimal thought and effort, no concern over clashing top/bottom – but I’m not sure my bladder is strong enough for getting to the toilet and then remembering you have to basically undress yourself entirely before you can sit down.
Checked, and @simple_dorset_life had been busy making her own croissants. ‘Pastry isn’t quick to make for croissants,’ said the caption, ‘but there’s something very soothing about the process of rolling and folding and creating something from scratch. I try to feel every sensation – the softness of the dough, the cold, slippery butter. It roots me and connects me to myself in a purposeful way. And of course there’s the croissant at the end! They’re a special treat, served with fresh berries, organic natural yogurt and an invigorating mug of nettle tea.’
I felt so inspired that I went to the Co-op, bought the papers and a four-pack of pain au chocolat and took them back to bed with an ‘invigorating mug of cheap instant coffee’. Ate all four pain au chocolat. Spent quite a long time trying to brush flaky pastry off the sheets.
Girls back at four, so spent the time until then doing all the jobs I was too exhausted to do last week, like putting away the sea of clean washing on my bedroom floor, chiselling old toothpaste off the sink, washing my own hair, etc.
This last week in summary (approx.):
The highlight was bookshop group on Thursday – fourteen families this week. If this carries on, we may have to put a cap on numbers or get people to book or something.
Because it has been so sunny I have finally caught up with all the washing and every single thing in the house is clean. It will only last for today, obviously, because then the things we’re wearing now will need washing, but it was a triumphant moment nonetheless.
I thought it would mean that I could finally pair up Jess’s socks, so I got her keen on the idea of playing a sorting game. We got everything out of the sock drawer and spread them out on the floor, then we took turns finding pairs and rolling them into balls.
I think the fact that I was genuinely excited about this shows how low my threshold for summer holiday fun is already, and it’s only 14 August.
At the end of the game we had seventeen random odd socks left. How is this even possible? Where were the other seventeen? I know people make a thing about odd socks, but I kind of assumed that was just to do with getting your laundry organised and that I’d just never in my life before been that on it sock-wise, I didn’t realise socks actually disappeared.
Finally got Jess to sleep tonight after what felt like weeks of toing and froing, fetching drinks, straightening sheets, rearranging ponies and generally trying not to scream, ‘Please just go to sleep before I smother you with this pillow!’ I love the summer but God, it doesn’t half screw around with bedtimes. I do feel for Jess. How exactly is it fair that you have to go to bed when it’s still broad daylight and you can hear other children playing out in their gardens in paddling pools?
On the other hand, how is it fair that I have my drinking time cut into when I can clearly hear other parents outside in their gardens opening bottles of beer and enjoying themselves?
Flo was in her room, FaceTiming someone loudly. I tapped on her door and asked her to keep it down a little bit. I was tempted to stand and listen for a while – she probably thinks that’s something I’d do – but honestly, have you listened to teenagers talk to each other lately? It’s boring. Plus I only understand every third word or so. It’s all memes and people being savage and getting wrecked, only not in the good old-fashioned way, with a litre of cheap cider in a park – the new way seems to just mean being the victim of a particularly savage meme or something.
Anyway, it’s dull, and I’d rather be downstairs on my own, drinking wine and eating chocolate raisins like they are a health food.
(Question: why, during the day, will Jess go out of her way to avoid letting a drop of water pass her lips but as soon as it’s bedtime she’s dying of a raving thirst and I absolutely must fetch her a drink immediately?)
Things I like about our splinter Busy Beavers group compared to regular scary Busy Beavers:
Who am I kidding? Of course Cassie will be at Busy Beavers. She is going to dine out on the outrage for months.
Instagram post today that made me feel most inadequate: New Zealand’s Minister for Women cycled to hospital this afternoon to give birth. Apparently, it was ‘mostly downhill’ but still, that’s a bit hardcore, isn’t it? Bike seats aren’t kind on the lady bits at the best of times, but if your cervix is partly dilated I can’t imagine that’s exactly going to help matters. Would the baby’s head get bumped? Would the bike seat fall in? (Probably should have done more research on how labour works before having two children.)
Messaged WIB.
‘Have you seen the New Zealand woman who’s just cycled to the hospital to give birth?’ I asked. ‘The only way Ian could get me to even walk to the car was by telling me there was a bacon sandwich in the front seat.’
I thought about it and followed it up.
‘I had a lot of pork cravings,’ I said, ‘don’t judge me.’
‘I read about it,’ said Sierra, ‘but she was on her way to be induced, so it’s not like she was pedalling through contractions or anything.’
Oh well. In that case, sign me up! Christ.
Flo came into the kitchen today as Jess and I were making cakes.
‘When are we going to throw that bowl away?’ she asked, nodding at the plastic mixing bowl I was using to cream the butter and sugar.
‘What do you mean, throw it away?’ I asked. ‘This bowl is really useful.’
‘It’s a bit gross, though, that it’s the bowl we are sick in but then you use it for cakes,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure that’s normal.’
‘I wash it out in between,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s not like I just tip away the puke and immediately crack in a couple of eggs.’
‘Still,’ said Flo, ‘it’s a bit rank.’
I tried to remember how long we’d had the cake/sick bowl. At least ten years. Maybe I’d had it before Flo was born? Somehow it had become the designated sick bowl, but also it was a useful size for baking. Was it rank? Maybe. But also it feels like a part of our family heritage. Like other people have family photos or war medals, only we have a cake/sick bowl. I bet @simple_dorset_life doesn’t have a cake/sick bowl. She probably has a cupboard full of charming, mismatched vintage mixing bowls that she’s collected from flea markets in small French villages.
‘You don’t have to eat the cake,’ I pointed out.
‘I’ll eat the cake,’ said Flo. ‘I’m just saying it’s rank.’
(Dilemma: I really want to ask WIB about the cake/sick bowl to check that it is something other families do, but what if it’s not?)
Ian picked the girls up this morning to take them to his mum’s for a week. I spent the rest of the day lying on the sofa in a kind of semi-coma, eating Jaffa Cakes, drinking tea and watching Homes Under The Hammer.
Really must start job-hunting.
Felt slightly more human this morning. Found three potential jobs to apply for. One working from home for twenty hours a week doing some admin for a local disability charity, one doing marketing for a dog rescue centre, and one as an editorial assistant at the Dorset Echo. Not sure what editorial assistants do exactly, but working for a paper sounds like it could be quite exciting.
The dog rescue application asked me to ‘give an example of a time when you have experienced conflict in the workplace and how you managed it.’
I was tempted to tell them about Steve and how I once told him that I ‘tolerated him at best’ while imagining hitting him with his own stapler but I figured that probably wasn’t the relaxed, compassionate sort of vibe that the dogs would appreciate.
Sent off all three. Very pleased with myself.
Distinctly bored by teatime when the girls normally come home from Ian’s. Tried FaceTiming them, but no answer. I went for a walk down to the beach, thinking I might treat myself to a gelato from the nice place by the pier, but then remembered it was half past seven on a Sunday.
Made do with a Double Decker from the Co-op.