Why Mummy Doesn’t Give a ****

I remember (many, MANY years ago) when I was in halls of residence at university, and you could immediately tell when you’d turned the corner from the (pleasantly scented with hints of Impulse and Ex’clamation and Wella Mousse) girls’ corridor and had entered the boys’ corridor, due to the Smell. After we left halls, the university renovated the building (it was planned, we hadn’t trashed the place. Much), and I mean they gutted the whole thing and stripped it down to the bare bones. I went in to drop something off to someone after the renovation, when the whole building was spanking fresh and full of new paint and plaster, and the entire concept of boys’ and girls’ corridors had been done away with and it was all mixed sex, but you could STILL smell the Smell on what had once been the old boys’ corridors. So I think the new owners might be stuck with it. Hopefully they’ll also have a teenage boy who can just slot into the stinky room and they’ll assume it’s only his own Smell, and not a lingering whiff of the previous occupant …

Anyway, new owners successfully avoided, off we trundled to our New Start, ‘I Will Survive’ (OBVS, what else? Though Jane has repeatedly asked me NOT to say ‘obvs’, or ‘totes amazeballs’, or ‘down with the kids’, even in an ironic way) blasting out of the car stereo. The sun was shining, the birds were singing – it was all Most Auspicious.

Unfortunately, about a mile down the road, the sun stopped shining, the birds stopped singing, the sky suddenly turned black and it began to piss down royally. This, needless to say, was Less Auspicious.

The removal men were distinctly unjovial at having to unload in the tipping rain, as if it was somehow my fault and I was some kind of misguided witch who had conjured up the storm on my way here, because mysteriously I actually wanted every single thing I owned in the world to get soaking wet, and they muttered darkly as they lugged everything in. Worse, in all my excitement about my quaint and adorable cottage, I’d neglected to actually measure or work out if any of my furniture would fit in, and there were some ugly scenes manoeuvring my super-king-size bed up the most un-super-king-size cottage stairs, and trying to get my sofa through the door into the sitting room. At one point the Chief Removal Man announced, ‘You’ll have to saw it in half, love!’ and I frostily reminded him how only that very morning he’d informed me that he was a removal EXPERT, and thus I had faith in his expertise and would not be sawing my sofa in half, because he could jolly well work out how to get it in, thank you very much (after all, he’s a man, he should have had YEARS of practice at trying to get it in). The sofa was eventually manhandled in, although the dark muttering had turned into open and loud swearing by that point.

Unfortunately, now that the previous owners’ artfully placed furniture had been removed and the sun was no longer streaming merrily through the windows like it had been when I’d viewed the property, it began to dawn on me that all the ‘quirks’ of the house I’d convinced myself were ‘rustic’ might possibly also be construed as being a ‘bit shit’, even ‘problematic’. The house was also a lot darker and somewhat damper than I remembered, and there were some suspicious marks on the ceiling I hadn’t noticed before, which suggested the roof wasn’t in perhaps as quite as good order as I’d blithely assumed when I’d dismissed the survey report’s queries about it as mere naysaying.

Simon had offered to come with me to view houses, which I’d tartly informed him was quite unnecessary as I was perfectly capable of finding a house without him – after all, there was a reason he was now my ex-husband. He’d mildly replied that he was only trying to help, and had thought that in his professional capacity he might have been able to offer some useful advice, nothing more. I, meanwhile, declined his offer once again on the basis that I wasn’t going to all the trouble, effort and expense of divorcing him only to have him continue to piss on my chips when it came to finding my Dream House. Or even my Vaguely Dreamish House. Looking around the Not Quite Even Vaguely Dreamish House now, I reflected that I’d possibly been a little hasty in rejecting his offer of help.

But never mind, I thought. It’ll be FINE! We just have to be positive, as I pointed out to Jane as she wailed in horror at the realisation that she no longer had fitted wardrobes to not put her New Look hauls in, but instead had an alcove with a rail across it in front of which I was planning on hanging an adorable floral curtain.

‘HOW am I supposed to cope with that to keep my clothes in?’ she shrieked. ‘It’s fucking Soviet, Mother. It’s probably one of the things that define you as living in poverty. This is inhumane. I could report you!’

‘To who?’ I said. ‘I don’t think fitted wardrobes and constant access to Snapchat are actually included the UN’s Rights of a Child. I think it’s more things like clean water and not being sent down the mines. And anyway, you’ve never in your entire life put anything away in your wardrobe. You just chuck it all on the floor, so I fail to see how this will actually make any difference to you whatsoever.’

‘Do we even have clean water?’ moaned Jane. ‘Are you going to announce next that we have to fetch it from a well? Maybe a river? Or are we lucky enough to have some sort of pump in the yard that we can fill buckets from so we can crouch in a tin bath once a week in front of the fire and try and scrub the rural dirt from our calloused palms? By the light of an oil lamp?’ she added dolefully.

‘Don’t be SILLY, Jane,’ I said as brightly as possible. ‘We’ve a lovely bathroom, with a proper vintage claw-footed bath. And hot running water and electricity. You’re overreacting, as usual.’

‘Don’t tell me I’m overreacting!’ shouted Jane, ‘I’m not overreacting. You’re the one who drove Dad away because you were always nagging him and who’s ruined our family and made us move to a hovel without indoor plumbing, but you say I’m the one who’s overreacting! Maybe YOU’RE overreacting by dragging us out here for no reason rather than just being nicer to Dad instead of BEING HORRIBLE ALL THE TIME!’

I was protesting that we DID have indoor plumbing and wishing I could tell the children there was so much more to Simon and me separating than me just not being that happy, when I was distracted by Peter wandering upstairs and collapsing dramatically on the landing because he was STARVING.

‘You’re not starving,’ I said automatically. ‘You’re just slightly hungry.’

‘I can’t find any food,’ said Peter gloomily. ‘Like, there’s literally NO FOOD, Mum.’

‘Have you looked?’ I asked. ‘Because there are boxes and boxes of food in the kitchen.’

‘Which room is the kitchen?’ said Peter hopelessly. ‘I can’t tell. There’s boxes everywhere, so how am I supposed to know where the kitchen is?’

‘Do you think it might be the one with the sink?’ I suggested. ‘And the fridge? Were they not any sort of a hint to you?’

Peter looked at me blankly. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I never thought of that.’

Peter wandered off back downstairs, in search of sustenance, and Jane burst furiously from the bathroom.

‘Is there a shower in the other bathroom?’ she demanded.

‘What other bathroom?’ I said.

‘There must be another bathroom,’ she insisted.

‘No, darling, there’s only one bathroom, I’m afraid. That’s sort of the thing about downsizing. You have a slightly smaller house. The clue is somewhat in the name, you know.’

‘But there must be another bathroom. An en suite or something. That can’t be the only one.’

‘It is,’ I informed her, as her face fell.

‘But there’s no shower,’ she wailed. ‘How am I supposed to wash my hair?’

‘Well, in the bath, sweetheart. Like people did for hundreds of years before the Americans invented showers.’

In truth, I’m not 100 per cent sure whether Americans invented showers or not, but it sounded plausible as they invented most mod cons. Luckily Jane was too distraught to challenge this statement, which made a nice change, as she usually likes to query every single thing that I say.

‘I can’t,’ she whimpered. ‘It’s not possible. I’m not THREE, to have plastic cups of water sluiced over my head, Mother! This is awful. Are you SURE you don’t have an en suite you’re hiding from me?’

‘Why would I hide an en suite from you?’ I said in surprise (though in truth, as I looked around the dimensions of the cottage, which could at best be described as ‘bijou and compact’, there was a small part of me also hoping for some extra rooms to materialise from somewhere, like the splendid room full of food the Railway Children found the morning after moving into their own slightly less than dreamy cottage).

‘I don’t know. I don’t know why you do anything anymore, Mother. You’ve abandoned Dad, you’ve made us come and live in this dump, and all you offer us in return is wittering on about how we’re going to get chatty chickens. So I wouldn’t put it past you to hide an en suite from me,’ she said bitterly.

‘That’s so unfair,’ I said. ‘I haven’t abandoned anyone.’ I bit back my words as I was about to snap, ‘Your father was the one who moved out, if you recall, not me. He was the one needing his “space to think”, not me. I’m the one who’s always here for you.’ But I managed to stop myself in time, as my mother’s voice rang in my ears, saying those exact things to me, reminding me how she was the victim and encouraging me to take her side. I would not have my daughter see me as a victim, and I would not, even if it killed me, say anything to make her feel she had to choose between Simon and me. The only reason I’d managed to stop myself telling the children about Miss Madrid was to avoid making them pick sides. Tears pricked in my eyes at the sheer injustice of it, though, that the more I tried to be fair and not make them take sides, the more Jane raged and hated me and blamed me for everything. Luckily she’d stormed off to find something else to complain about before she saw the treacherous tears. I wiped my eyes and sniffed ‘Strong Independent Woman’ to myself, as Peter bellowed up the stairs, ‘MUM! There’s TWO rooms with sinks down here, so how do I know which one is the kitchen?’

I trudged downstairs to explain to Peter in words of ideally less than one syllable that the BIG room with the fridge, cupboards and table was the KITCHEN, and the very small room beside the back door with nothing more than a sink in it was the SCULLERY. There then ensued a lengthy discussion about what exactly a scullery was, culminating in Peter saying, ‘Well, if it’s just a utility room from the olden days, why don’t you just CALL it a utility room?’ and me insisting, ‘Because this is a lovely, quirky, quaint old cottage, darling, with oodles of character and they have sculleries, not utility rooms. It’s all about the soul, you see,’ while Peter shovelled Doritos into his mouth and look at me in confusion.

‘OK, Mum,’ he said kindly. ‘We can call it a scullery if it makes you happy.’

I was so nonplussed at winning the scullery battle so easily, and fretting that it was because Peter felt sorry for me (in the old house, everyone but me had persisted in calling the larder ‘the big cupboard’ despite my frequent exhortations to call it ‘the larder’ because we were more middle class than a ‘big cupboard’), that I forgot to take the Doritos off him before he inhaled the entire bag.

He was still cramming fistfuls of Doritos into his mouth when Jane marched downstairs and announced that she supposed she’d just have to make do with having a bath, and where were the towels? I suggested that perhaps she could help with the unpacking for a little longer before buggering off to bathe herself, but was frostily informed that this wasn’t an option and her life had been ruined quite enough. I replied that maybe, just maybe, if she’d shown the TINIEST bit of interest in her new home, the lack of bathrooms and showers would not have come as such a shock to her, but this was met with an eye roll and a snort. I counted myself lucky to have avoided a ‘FFS, Mother!’

I’m still trying to pinpoint when the ‘Mothers’ began. When she started talking, Jane would call me Mama, which was too bloody adorable for words, then when she was about three and a half, a horrible older child at nursery made fun of her for saying Mama, and she switched to Mummy. Then it became Mum, but it happened gradually, so I don’t really remember when exactly she gave up on Mummy, although it didn’t really matter, because Mum was OK, and anyway, only screamingly posh people with ponies called Tarquin (both the people and the ponies) still call their mothers Mummy past the age of about twelve. But I was quite unprepared for the day when I stopped even being Mum and simply became Mother – a word only uttered when dripping with sarcasm, disgust, condescension or all three. To my shame, I think I vaguely recall a time in my teens when I also only referred to my dearest Mama as Mother in similarly scathing tones, so I can only hope it’s just a ‘phase’ and that she’ll grow out of it. Though I’m wondering how many more fucking ‘phases’ I have to endure before my children become civilised and functioning members of society.

It seems like people have been telling me ‘It’s just a phase’ for the last fifteen bloody years. Not sleeping through the night is ‘just a phase’. Potty training and the associated accidents are ‘just a phase’. The tantrums of the terrible twos – ‘just a phase’. The picky eating, the back chat, the obsessions. The toddler refusals to nap, the teenage inability to leave their beds before 1 pm without a rocket being put up their arse, the endless singing of Frozen songs, the dabbing, the weeks where apparently making them wear pants was akin to child torture. All ‘just phases’. When do the ‘phases’ end, though? WHEN? I’m surprised, when every man and his dog was sticking their nose in and giving me unsolicited advice about what to do about my marriage (‘Leave the bastard,’ ‘Make it work for the children,’ ‘You have to try and forgive him,’ ‘Screw him for every penny he has,’ ‘You have to understand that it’s different for men,’ ‘Cut his bollocks off’), that no one told me that shagging random women in Madrid was obviously ‘just a phase’, and I just had to wait for Simon to grow out of it.

‘MOTHER,’ shouted Jane, bringing me back to earth with a bump. ‘You still haven’t found me a towel.’

‘Jane,’ I said as calmly as possible. ‘If you want a bath that badly, you’ll have to find your own towel. I’ve other things to do.’

Peter mumbled something unintelligible through a mouthful of Doritos, spraying orange crumbs all over Jane.

‘OH MY GOD! HE’S DISGUSTING! MOTHER, DO SOMETHING ABOUT HIM!’ screamed Jane. ‘Can’t he, like, live in the shed or something?’

Peter swallowed, and in the brief window before eating something else shouted, ‘YOU live in the shed! Live with the CHICKENS! Ha ha ha!’

Jane screamed more and Peter continued to snigger through his mouthful of salty preservatives and flavourings, and I left the room in despair. I decided to unpack my books. That would be a nice, calming activity. And also, once the books were on the bookcase, they’d hide the large and extremely dubious stain on the floral wallpaper that had looked so charmingly faded and vintage a few months ago, and now just looked like something from the ‘before’ shots on Changing Rooms. Maybe, I mused, as I stacked the books, I could strip off all the paper and do something cunning with bits of baton to give the impression of wood panelling, à la Handy Andy …? Then I found Riders and decided to cheer myself up with a few pages, for surely there’s no situation so dire, especially not when it comes to cheating men and revolting teenagers, that has not been faced up to by one of Jilly Cooper’s characters with a large vodka and tonic and an excellent pun. Jake was just shagging Tory in the stable for the first time, and I was wondering if I too looked a lot less fat without my clothes on – I suspected not, though the horrible realisation was dawning on me that if I were ever going to have sex again, I would HAVE to take my clothes off in front of a strange man, although to be honest, the thought of just never having sex again was preferable to doing that – when a drenched and furious Jane shot into the room, making noises like a scalded cat. The problem, it quickly turned out was quite the opposite – she was very far indeed from being scalded, because having run herself a nice deep bath, she’d plunged in to find that it was freezing cold, because there was no hot water.

‘Oh, I expect they’ve maybe just turned it off, in case the pipes freeze or something,’ I said vaguely.

‘It’s APRIL, Mother,’ said Jane. ‘The pipes won’t freeze in April! And anyway, they only moved out yesterday, you said. Why would they turn off the hot water for the twenty-four hours before we moved in?’

I’d no idea, but I wasn’t giving Jane the satisfaction of saying so. I poked vaguely at the boiler, hindered rather than helped by Peter, who insisted that if I’d just let him look at it, he could probably fix it. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to be helpful or just taking after his father, who always claimed he could fix things and refused to call a professional in until after he’d broken it even more.

‘What’s for dinner?’ demanded Jane, as I hopefully pressed all the switches and turned the boiler on and off several times.

‘Oh God, I don’t know, I’m trying to fix the boiler,’ I snapped.