Had a browse through Tinder tonight, but I’m really not feeling it at the moment. I kept scrolling through pictures of men who just looked so sad, and I can’t imagine how on earth you could date them and not want to kill yourself. I don’t even mean sad in a ‘moody and mysterious way’, just actually sad about life.
I think I might take a break from it over the summer holidays. It’s going to be hard enough maintaining my own sanity, let alone someone else’s.
Worrying thoughts about having to give the garden cat mouth to mouth following some kind of bee reaction – 4. Times during the afternoon I wished I hadn’t googled ‘cat eaten a bee’ – numerous.
At lunchtime I went and sat in the museum garden. There was a ginger-and-white cat there, enjoying the sunshine. I watched him watching a bee. The bee was going from flower to flower of the buddleia that’s growing out of the wall and the cat was following it with his eyes. I felt a wave of contentment, sitting in the sunshine, watching the cat watching a bee. Everything felt like it fitted just right.
‘You know what life is all about don’t you, cat?’ I said.
He looked at me over his shoulder, turned back to the buddleia, made a little leap and ate the bee.
Are cats meant to eat live bees?
Busy Beavers kicked off big style today when Cassie and her Mean Girls crew caught Jess drinking a Fruit Shoot.
I few months ago I got sucked into a Mumsnet thread about Fruit Shoots and honestly, the vitriol was astonishing. I ended up searching the whole forum just to see – ‘Fruit Shoot’ came back with over five hundred results. I refined it to ‘Fruit Shoot Evil’ and it came back with sixty-five conversation streams.
The threads were full of horror stories of poor husbands innocently buying them for their children, (despite being told not to! When will these Mumsnet men ever learn to do as they are told?), and of otherwise charming, cultured toddlers throwing down their copies of Opera Now magazine and turning into savage beasts at the mere sniff of a bottle.
Jess’s Fruit Shoot was spotted by Yvonne, Cassie’s lapdog, who looked like she might climax on the spot at the opportunity to grass me up to Cassie. I spotted them muttering and nodding in my direction, and then they got up and came over.
‘Frankie,’ said Cassie, doing a good line in Fruit Shoot artificial sweetness, ‘I couldn’t help but notice that Jess has a Fruit Shoot. I just thought I should flag that quite a lot of the parents at Busy Beavers are keen not to have their children exposed to Fruit Shoots. Some of us prefer to keep our little ones free of nasties!’
Seriously, now, ladies, can we get a little perspective here? It’s a fruit squash, not nuclear waste. Sure, it’s a bit sickly and probably water would be better, but it’s not like you’re giving your kids a plastic bottle of meths to swig on.
I don’t know what came over me, but I just sort of snapped. I stood up and picked up the offending Fruit Shoot. ‘You’re so right, Cassie,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what I was thinking, subjecting my poor child to such cruelty.’
She looked momentarily triumphant, but I wasn’t done. ‘Next time I’ll get her a milkshake with her Happy Meal,’ I said, and with that I looped the Fruit Shoot up in the air over her head and into the bin like a shorter, chubbier Michael Jordan.
Sierra whooped and high-fived Louise. Cassie just stared, open-mouthed.
‘Let’s go, ladies,’ I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder, ‘I’ve got prosecco and Jaffa Cakes at my house.’ I gave a sharp whistle and Jess, in an act of obedience she’s unlikely to ever repeat, ran to my side. As we walked out, Jess looked back over her shoulder and called ‘Sashay, away.’
Our local primary school had their summer fete this afternoon and as I’m guessing it might be where Jess will go next September (probably should look into that), I thought we’d all three go along and check it out. Flo might be fourteen, but she still loves a tombola.
We dodged past the ‘World Cup football challenge’ and ‘guess how many severely manhandled sweets are in the jar’ competition and headed straight for the tombola, which was being run by a group of excited-looking small boys, all squabbling over who got to hold the bucket of tickets.
It’s one of those unspoken summer fete rules that whether you go, there are always the same prizes.
Classic tombola checklist:
I don’t know why primary schools don’t just think of their target audience – tired, flustered parents – double the price and make all of the prizes wine. They’d have enough money for that new set of steel drums in no time.
Jess was desperate to win the Brut gift set for Ian but after we’d spent more than it would have cost me to just go into a shop and buy it she settled for winning a Kellogg’s shower gel. Kellogg’s as in cornflakes. Don’t ask me, because I didn’t understand it either. I can only assume they have taken two things that happen at a similar time of day, and thought it it would work to combine them into one product. Like Gordon’s Gin putting their name to a collection of children’s bedtime stories. (Not actually a bad idea.)
I won a pack of six Jaffa Cake mini rolls. Best Day Ever.
After the excitement of the tombola we sat on the grass eating Soleros and watched the talent show. I use talent in the loosest possible sense of the word.
It was mainly small girls singing songs with inappropriate lyrics about love and relationships – ‘just let me love you for tonight’ – but I did enjoy Aaron the Amazing and his Marvellous Magic Show. Aaron looked to be about six, but he had the confidence of a thirty-two-year-old man after two pints of lager on a sunny day. I mean sure, you could see the handkerchiefs sticking out of his sleeve throughout his whole act, and the rabbit that appeared ‘as if by magic’ from under his hat had to be carried on by his mum, but somehow that didn’t seem to matter.
Hearty applause all round for Aaron.
‘Thanks for a great day, Mum,’ said Flo when we got home. I tried not to look startled.