Take some advice from one who knows. When it is bucketing down and you are in the grips of PMT, just stay in bed. Or, if that is not an option, since you have to deliver small children to their Spanish lessons, just park yourself in Kaffe-O until it’s time to retrieve them. Drink your one-shot latte and sit back until the rain subsides, and pray that your rage tapers off with it.
In my efforts to visit the library and do other non-essential tasks, I left my gloves in ‘Threads’, my car keys in the pharmacy and my mind somewhere between Corries and the Mace. Up and down the road I traipsed, in a state of befuddlement, but not until I’d bought a two kilo bag of spuds which I had to lug after me.
And all this was before, BEFORE the small child’s joint party with a little boy to celebrate their fifth birthdays. I need not tell you, that soft-play areas are my nemesis. The noise. The garishness. The bloody parents, especially those who feign ignorance when little Joshua elbows Hermione off the slide. ‘What? Who? Where?’ Surely not!’ You may recall that on Saturday the rain was torrential, so it felt as if every child between the ages of 0 to 9 a ten-mile radius, was in Funtastic. It was MAYHEM.
The small child was terrified when pluckier children took her off into the deeper entrails of the centre to the ‘big slide’. Balls were lobbed and tears were shed. She ended up making her own fun with a few others in their little ‘party room’ where they launched themselves off the sofa onto the pile of coats they had shunted onto the floor. I didn’t give a shit as long as I didn’t have to do anymore consoling, I was trying to put a brave face on it myself.
I have discovered, that since doing Dry January, I can’t drink anymore, or not without feeling truly vile anyway. We had headed for pizza on Friday night as I was in no mood to cook (I had a rabbit cake to bake, I wasn’t cooking dinner as well; HELL no.) I drank two small glasses of red and I might as well have polished off the bottle for the throb in my temples the next morning.
You will, however, be pleased to know that the chocolate bunny cake, despite having a lop-sided head, was a success. ‘Wow,’ said the small child, looking on in wonder. ‘Told you you could do it!’ chirruped the older one, and my sour little heart soared.
But I was saved by the loveliness of the mums and dads who came along to the party. Every time I muttered ‘For fuck’s sake’ as some haribo-fuelled hooligan tore past, they smiled in sympathy and made reassuring comments. My friend and I practically had to exert force to make them accept a cup of tea or coffee. One mum refused outright. ‘No way, I’ll get my own,’ said she, and I had to almost rugby tackle her away from the café queue. ‘I have brought you here, to this ninth circle of hell, for my child’s party,’ I said. ‘for fuck’s sake accept a cup of coffee.’ She sat back down and drunk up smartish when it was proffered.
I rang the Mothership after to report how it had all gone. ‘Dreadful,’ she said. ‘I’ll never forget the time we had your party in the Groomsport boathouse and those boys, the RAMSTAMMING of them up and down that hall. And those wee girls, ashen they were, for fear of being trampled, or having their head taken off by a football. I had a migraine for a week after it.’ Yes, I don’t recall that party being much craic myself.
‘I hope you at least got the mums and dads a nice cup of tea,’ said Mum.
‘Surely,’ I said, and told her about the woman I verbally abused as I exhorted her to take a cup. Sometimes mum can cope with swearing. Not last week.
‘You said WHAT to the woman?’
‘Relax,’ said I. ‘everyone swears a bit now.’
‘Desperate altogether, to think how such profanities have infiltrated everyday parlance.’
(I think she’s reading the Classics again.)
