Why Mummy Swears

I have researched all about the company, and rehearsed my HR-friendly answers, but who knows what people even ask in interviews anymore. Maybe they don’t want to know about my strengths and weaknesses. (I’m a team player, obviously, but sometimes I’m too much of a perfectionist – ha ha! No one tells the truth about their strengths and weaknesses in interviews do they? ‘My biggest strength is actually my ability to sleep at my desk with my eyes open, thus making it appear that I am present and productive, while actually napping, and my main weakness is probably an inability to use the toilet when there is anyone else in there because I am afraid I might inadvertently fart and someone will hear and they will call me FartGirl forever more, so sometimes I end up wasting a lot of time in the loo waiting for there to be no one else in there even when I only need a wee.’) But is that what they want to know now? Maybe they’ve gone all ‘blue-sky thinking’ and ‘outside the box’ (Ooooh, another strength – ‘I was the reigning office champion at Buzzword Bingo in my previous job for three years running’), and will ask you ‘zany’ questions about ‘What sort of tree would you be, if you were a tree?’ and ‘Squirrel or raccoon?’ that reveal some hidden psychological depths about you.

Katie across the road came over for a coffee before school pick-up, as her oldest, Lily, has just started school.

‘It feels so strange, Lily being at school,’ said Katie. ‘Just me and Ruby in the house. I don’t know why, because it’s been just Ruby and me while Lily was at nursery, but somehow it feels different. I can’t believe she’s at school. She looked so grown-up going in!’

‘Ha!’ I said. ‘I know. The thing is, you will have thought she looked grown-up now on her first day, but in a couple of years you’ll be looking at the tinies going in and thinking how little they are and are they really big enough for school.’

‘They grow up so fast,’ sighed Katie, before shrieking, ‘RUBY! RUBY! LEAVE THE DOG! I SAID LEAVE JUDGY ALONE! DO NOT PULL JUDGY’S WILLY! FFS, what is WRONG WITH YOU! Oh, Christ, scrap what I said. They don’t grow up fast enough. RUBY! Do NOT pour your juice over Judgy. I said NO! Oh God, why don’t they grow up faster?’

‘Do you think I could pass for a millennial, Katie?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Well, millennial is quite a broad term, isn’t it?’ said Katie kindly.

Friday, 9 September

The Big Day dawned. The day on which it all hinged. I escaped the house without getting anything sticky on me, which frankly was a miracle.

I had carefully factored in time to stop at a suitably artisanal and ethical coffee shop on my way, so I could swish in brandishing my soy chai organic latte, thus demonstrating my hipness and also how caring I am.

I sashayed over to the receptionist and gave my name, and was bidden to stare into a camera and issued with a lanyard with my hastily printed photo on it, which made me look like a serial killer and also made me wonder what the fuck had happened to my hair on the way in from the car park.

A Youth in too-short trousers binged out of a shiny lift to collect me and shook his head in disappointment at my extortionately expensive virtuous coffee. (What is it with the too-short trousers, especially on men? And no one seems to wear socks with them either. I wonder if this trend has caused a downturn in the sock industry?)

‘Oh!’ he said in surprise. ‘Did you forget your own cup? I didn’t even know they still did takeaway cups.’

‘It’s biodegradable,’ I bleated hopefully. ‘Non-chlorinated cardboard. Recycled.’

‘Mmmm, but do you know how much energy it takes to recycle it?’ he reproved me. ‘Much more than just washing a reuseable cup, you know.’

Fuckety fuckety doodah. I had fallen at the first hurdle. I had been convinced that as long as something could be recycled it would be approved as suitably sustainable and twenty-first-century, but obviously I was wrong. I discreetly abandoned the cup on a window ledge as the Youth whisked me along shiny glass corridors, before depositing me in a white room with artificial grass on the floor.

‘This is our Thinking Space,’ he informed me. ‘We brainstorm and throw concepts around in here. The walls are designed to be wipe-clean, so we can just throw ideas up on them to run past everyone else. I’ll just go and tell Ed and Gabrielle and the others that you’re here.’

I nodded solemnly as the Youth gestured round the extraordinary room, and tried not to notice that the only thing currently drawn on the walls was a large cock and balls. I wondered if I should wipe it off before the interviewers arrived, in case they thought I had done it? But what if they arrived while I was in the process of wiping it off, and then they really thought I had done it? Or what if it was a test, to see how broadminded one was, and wiping it off would reveal one as repressed and bourgeois? But on the other hand, what if it was a test of initiative, to see if one would have the wit to whip the cock and balls off the wall before the officialdom came in? Literally all I could think about now was the cock and balls.

As I stared gloomily at the genitalia on the wall, which seemed to be getting bigger before my eyes, the door opened and four people came in.

‘Hi, Ellen, sorry to keep you waiting,’ said one of the women, who was totally pulling off the cropped trouser and ankle boot look, without a hint of having got dressed in the darkness. ‘I’m Gabrielle from HR. This is Ed, who would be your line manager.’ She gestured to a morose but otherwise perfectly normal-looking man, who more importantly was not young and perky, but rather looked in his late forties, which gave me hope that they might be open to employing someone who was old enough to remember Rick Astley for something other than rickrolling. ‘And these are Tony and Gail, who’ll be sitting in too, if that’s OK.’

I beamed, and mumbled something that hopefully sounded like a greeting.

‘We keep it very informal here,’ said Gabrielle. ‘We don’t like the traditional panel approach of you facing us across a table, so we’ll all just pull up a seat and have a chat.’ She gestured around at the ‘eclectic’ mix of furniture, which I was sorry to see did include the dreaded beanbags, and various squashy-looking cubes and foam shapes that I presumed we were to perch on. As she waved at the ‘seating’ she noticed the drawing on the wall.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, what is THAT doing there?’ she exploded.

‘It wasn’t me, it was there when I came in!’ I put in quickly.

Gabrielle looked at me slightly oddly. ‘I didn’t think it was you,’ she said. ‘I mean, why would you …? Anyway, never mind. Tony, find out who had this room last and have a word, will you? That’s really not acceptable. Anyway, let’s take a seat and get on.’

Cunningly, I grabbed one of the squashy cubes to perch on rather than a beanbag, which I definitely wouldn’t have been able to manoeuvre out of with dignity as my new trousers were a bit tight, and I was worried they might split if I had to heave myself up from a beanbag. It didn’t seem the sort of place where flashing your fanny in the interview would secure you the position. Unfortunately, that meant that Ed, who would be my boss, should I get the job, was relegated to a beanbag. He didn’t look impressed and muttered something that sounded distinctly like ‘FFS’ as he gingerly lowered himself down. I fear that was possibly not a good first impression to make.

The rest of the interview was all-rightish, I think. I don’t know. Ed asked various questions about my skills and experience, which I answered perfectly well, but he just sort of grunted after each reply and frowned more, so I don’t know if he had already decided he hated me and couldn’t work with me because I had made him sit on a beanbag.

Gabrielle asked the usual HR questions, which I never know how to answer – do you go for bland and generic and try to appear normal, or do you attempt to be quirky and unique to try to stand out from the other candidates? Also, I am never sure which questions are genuine questions about yourself, and which are trick questions designed to tell if you are a psychopath. Tony and Gail didn’t say much at all, but kept making notes during certain questions, which made me suspect that they were the ones doing the psycho-assessing.

No one asked me what sort of tree I would be if I were a tree. I had already decided on a silver birch, as they are shiny and stand out from the crowd, but also birch is a very multipurpose and useful tree. Maybe it was just as well no one cared what sort of tree I would be.

I have blisters from the new shoes, and also there was an unlucky moment when Ed was asking me a complicated question when I realised I had toast crumbs in my bra and they were chafing my nipple. I didn’t even dare try and wriggle discreetly to dislodge them in case Tony and Gail thought I was twitching in a psychopathic way.

I suppose I will find out in due course how it went. It wasn’t completely awful, like an interview someone I was at university with had, where they accidentally set the interviewer’s desk on fire, but it definitely could have gone better. I still suspect the cock and balls was some sort of psychometric test, and I have almost certainly failed it.

Saturday, 10 September

Tonight was the now-traditional pop to the pub for the first week of term debrief with Hannah and Sam. I hoped they might reassure me that it didn’t sound like the interview had gone that badly, but Simon just shook his head and said, ‘Why on earth did you feel the need to tell them you hadn’t drawn on the walls? What had you done that would make them think you had?’

Katie, alas, was unable to join us and listen to our grumbles about homework and packed sodding lunches. (I can’t work out why I hate packed lunches so much, and find them such an utter chore – they take literally five minutes to make, yet they loom over my mornings like doom-laden black clouds of horror. Maybe it’s the tedious inevitability of having to make them every single term-time morning, or maybe it’s just because my precious moppets refuse to deviate from ham sandwiches for Peter and cheese sandwiches for Jane, with sausage rolls as a ‘treat’ on the odd Friday when I have lost the will to even make sandwiches, or maybe it’s just that I am a really, really terrible mother?)

Simon seemed to be on top of things, and didn’t annoy me by asking hopeless questions while I was trying to get ready, so I was a good and kind wife and did not ply the children with Haribos before I ran out the door and left him to deal with the fallout (oh, the petty revenges we stoop to when you have been married as long as us), but my calm and serene poise was shattered nonetheless when I popped into the sitting room to say a loving farewell to my handsome husband and adorable children and found Simon and Jane playing on Jane’s phone.

‘What are you doing, darlings?’ I said fondly, as I gave them each a kiss.

‘Nothing!’ snapped Jane, looking shifty. ‘Nothing. Daddy’s just helping me with something. You’ll be late, Mummy, you’d better go.’

Jane has never given a toss about me being late in her life before. In fact, she usually goes out of her way to fanny about, annoy me, delay me and generally do everything she can to MAKE me late. Her favourite is to wait until I am literally going out the door with my coat on and then suddenly remember some incredibly important story she has to tell me, question she has to ask me or letter she has to show me right now. So my suspicions were immediately roused.

‘Simon, what are you doing?’ I demanded.

‘Don’t worry, sweetie, I’m just setting up an Instagram account for Jane. She said you said it was OK, but you didn’t have time to do it for her, and she needs an email address for it, so she’s using mine.’

‘JANE! You LYING TOAD!’ I bellowed. ‘I have told you until I am blue in the face that you are NOT having an Instagram account BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT THIRTEEN! How DARE you lie to your father about this?’

Jane looked mutinous and shouted back yet again about HOW UNFAIR I am, because EVERYBODY ELSE had one, and I was ruining her life, and DADDY had said it was OK, so why was I so mean.

‘SIMON!’ I yelled. ‘Why the actual fuck did you agree to this?’

‘I DIDN’T!’ said Simon indignantly. ‘I said if you had said it was all right, then I didn’t have any objection, and Jane said you had said she could have an account.’

‘I SAID SHE COULD HAVE AN ACCOUNT WHEN SHE IS THIRTEEN!’ I howled. ‘I’m so angry with you, Jane. We have been over and over this, and yet you thought you could get one over on me by lying to your father. Did you think I wouldn’t find out? I don’t know what makes me crosser, the blatant disregard for my rules or the lying to your father. Don’t you agree she has behaved very badly, Simon?’

‘Er,’ muttered Simon, ‘I suppose it’s not ideal …’

‘Simon, FFS! Not ideal? Is that all you have to say?’

‘Well, it’s not the end of the world, is it? I think you might be overreacting a tiny bit. It was just a misunderstanding.’

I took a very deep breath and calmly said, ‘Jane, could you please go to your room, while I discuss this with your father?’

Jane slouched out, still muttering her favourite mantra about everything being so unfair, and then despite the several additional deep breaths I had taken while she was making her leisurely exit from the room, I could no longer speak calmly, as I shrieked, ‘Simon. It was NOT a misunderstanding; it was a deliberate manipulation of us by Jane. She knows perfectly well I have said she is not to have an account yet. She just thought you were a soft touch and she would get round you while I was out, and I would be none the wiser. And WHY can’t you just bloody back me up with the children? Why the fuck do I always have to be the bad cop, and you get to be the good cop, while I rant and rave and you just refuse to take anything seriously? You ALWAYS DO THIS, and it’s NOT FAIR!’

‘You do realise that you now sound like your eleven-year-old daughter, claiming things aren’t fair?’ said Simon, in his special ‘I’m going to sound annoyingly rational because I think you are hysterical’ voice.

‘But it’s NOT fair!’ I howled. ‘You never punish them, you always leave it up to me, so when they grow up and write their memoirs I will be the Mommie Dearest figure and you will be some sort of fucking saint. Joan Crawford probably wasn’t even that bad a mother. She probably just had a husband who DIDN’T BACK HER UP!’

‘I think she was quite a bad mother …’ remarked Simon.

‘Don’t change the subject,’ I snapped.

‘I do back you up though. I backed you up over Peter’s screen ban last week.’

‘Well, apart from the two of you downloading and watching Guardians of the Galaxy while I was at the supermarket. And letting him play Fortnite! Apart from that, you totally backed me up.’ I said with what was supposed to be a hollow laugh, but sadly came out more as a strangulated snarl.

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake! I DO back you up, you just overreact ALL THE TIME. My God, are you hormonal or something? Is this the start of The Change?’

‘I am not hormonal.’ I said coldly. ‘I resent your assumption that every time I express any emotion, it must just be because I am an irrational … beachball … just swept away on an uncontrollable tide of hormones.’

‘What an image!’ sniggered Simon, who was fiddling with his phone. ‘And actually, darling, according to the period tracker app on my phone, you are due on, actually.’

‘MY FUCKING CYCLE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT YOU ARE AN INCONSIDERATE PRICK! AND THAT APP IS FUCKING CREEPY AND A TOTAL INVASION OF MY PRIVACY!’ I snarled.

‘On the contrary, sweetheart, it’s a useful reminder for when I need to don my Kevlar vest each month,’ sighed Simon.

‘I am late,’ I responded with as much dignity as I could muster. ‘I am going now. We will talk about this tomorrow. In the meantime, do not let Jane have an Instagram account, if that is not too much to ask!’

I swept out of the house on that parting note, pausing only to pop upstairs and throw some tampons in my bag, as I had a horrible feeling he was right about me being due on. I do hate it when he is right.

All in all, therefore, I was not in the best frame of mind when I arrived at the pub to meet Hannah and Sam, and before we even got onto the subject of this year’s teachers and class groups I indignantly relayed my tale of woe. Sam’s daughter Sophie and Hannah’s daughter Emily are the same age as Jane, although Hannah’s children are at a different school, due to the vagaries of the catchment system, and they at least shared my outrage and concerns, as I hiccupped about paedophiles and sexting, unlike Simon who had made unhelpful suggestions about privacy settings and parental controls when I had raised these concerns.

Nonetheless, despite her sympathetic noises about this, and about my tales of the short-trousered millennials with their reuseable cups and their meeting rooms that were more like upmarket soft-plays, and did they think that I had said the right thing in answer to that question, I could not help but feel that Hannah was not wholly concentrating on Instagram or my interview, and indeed was squirming in her seat like a newly potty-trained toddler in need of a wee.

‘Are you all right, Hannah?’ I said. ‘You look a bit odd. Have you got a UTI?’

‘What?’ said Hannah.‘Why would I have a UTI? I do have some news, actually, but I’m not supposed to tell you yet!’

‘Well, you have to tell us now,’ said Sam indignantly. ‘You can’t just say, “I have news” and then refuse to say what it is!’

‘Oh, fuck my life, you’re up the duff!’ I gasped. ‘That’s why you’re wriggling around and needing a wee – you have pregnancy bladder. Oh my God! But you’re forty-two! You will have to go to the special unit for the geriatric mothers, with all the other old people who have been shagging. Still, I suppose that’s better than all the OAPs who are apparently filling the clap clinics because they are all at it like bunnies and not taking precautions now they’re too old to even worry about being a geriatric mother.’

‘Thank you, Ellen, for your supportive comments,’ said Hannah dryly. ‘Firstly, I don’t think they call them “geriatric mothers” any more. It’s advanced maternal age or something, which isn’t much better, but you are classed as one of them at thirty-five, so it’s not like I’d be the only dried-up husk of a medical miracle if I was knocked up, which I’m not, because as you may have noticed, I’m the best part of the way down a bottle of Cab Sauv! Which I’d hardly be doing if I was fucking pregnant, would I now, Miss Marple?’

‘I suppose not,’ I conceded grudgingly. ‘So what is it then?’

‘Shall we guess? Let’s guess!’ suggested Sam excitedly. ‘We could make a drinking game of it and do shots every time we get it wrong?’

‘Or Hannah could just tell us, because I am her best friend and she tells me everything, like she promised she would when we were eleven.’ I said. ‘Maybe she’ll just tell me, and not you, Sam, because I’m her best friend!’

‘Ah,’ said Sam. ‘But I am her best gay friend, which means, according to the laws of cliché, that actually she tells me everything.’

‘Ha!’ I said. ‘Yes, but according to the laws of cliché, after a Gay Best Friend is told a secret, they have to go shoe shopping with you and then drink Cosmopolitans, and you hate shoe shopping and Cosmos give you heartburn. I WIN!’

‘My God!’ said Hannah. ‘Do you actually WANT to hear my news, or do you just want to squabble between yourselves until I put you on the naughty step?’

‘I know. You’ve won the lottery! Like millions and squillions and you are going to share it with your best friend.’ I squawked.

‘Will you both shut the fuck up? I’m not preggers and I’ve not won the lottery, BUT Charlie has proposed. We haven’t officially announced it yet, because we haven’t told our parents, but I couldn’t keep it a secret. Look, look at my ring!’ said Hannah smugly, fishing a rather swanky little leather box out of her bag.

‘Oh my God! Oh my actual fucking God! You’re getting married! To Charlie. It’s like a fairy story.’ I babbled, only slightly tearfully, because my best friend in the whole wide world was getting married again, and this time to a lovely man, instead of a dickhead goblin troll, like her horrible first husband who had unexpectedly walked out on her three years ago.

‘Oh, babe. That’s amazeballs!’ said Sam, also with suspiciously moist eyes. ‘Oh, wait. I’m trying to stop saying “amazeballs”. Sophie told me it was the lamest thing she had ever heard and she was embarrassed for me.’

‘Ooooh, just look at the rock too!’ I squeaked. ‘Shiny shiny shiny. Put it on. Oh, blissful bling, it’s gorgeous! And can I help you plan the wedding? Please say I can? What about a dress? When is it? Oooh, you should totally have one of those vintage shabby chic weddings in a barn, with hay bales and antique bottles full of wildflowers and wellies under your wedding dress!’

‘Ellen, does it ever occur to you that you spend a tiny bit too much time on Pinterest?’ enquired Sam.

‘No. There is no such thing as spending too much time on Pinterest. And anyway, I am the one who got Hannah and Charlie together, so I should totes be the wedding planner extraordinaire. And the guest of honour. Oh, frabjous day! I can finally buy my dream hat. Oh, I’m so glad you are getting married, Hannah, and I can get a hat.’

‘Firstly, Sophie informs me that “totes” is also one of the things only lame, sad old people say, and secondly, some people might say that getting Hannah and Charlie together now was the least you could do, after breaking his poor heart at university and letting poor Hannah pine after him for all those years, so that they ended up marrying unsuitable other people,’ said Sam, rather unkindly, I thought.

It is true that Hannah and Charlie and I do go back a very long way, and it is also true that I might have once led him on a tiny bit and then got off with Simon instead, and possibly, yes, if I was a better person then maybe Hannah and Charlie would’ve got together twenty years ago, but I did do the right thing in the end when I bumped into Charlie a couple of years ago, and so really I think I do deserve all the credit. And the best hat at the wedding.

‘We are talking about hats, Sam, not past indiscretions.’ I said with dignity, before babbling more at Hannah about my Vision for her elegant, rustic, Pinterest-tastic wedding.

‘I don’t want to get married in a barn with wellies under my dress, though,’ protested Hannah. ‘And anyway, we haven’t even set a date yet, so put down your phone and stop bidding on vintage bottles on eBay, Ellen!’

‘I was just looking!’ I said indignantly. ‘There’s no harm in looking. Ooooh, just think, we can go dress shopping. And get shitfaced again on the free champagne in the posh dress shops.Oh, just think … A wedding dress. An elegant, tasteful one, not a confection of taffeta monstrousness like last time. Can I be a bridesmaid? Can I still wear a hat if I’m a bridesmaid? Emily and Sophie and Jane could be bridesmaids too!’

‘Ellen, I’m forty-two, and we are both getting married for the second time. I’m not having dozens of bridesmaids – this is not the Royal Wedding, you know!’

‘It would be nice,’ I muttered sulkily.

‘I’ve DONE the big wedding, Ellen. And had no control of it, because my mother arranged most of it, and what my mother didn’t take over, my bloody ex-monster-in-law did, as she did her best to make the day all about her, right down to the old hag turning up at the church in what looked suspiciously like a wedding dress herself, before trying to claim that it was “tradition” for her to dance the first dance with my new husband. I want this day to be about Charlie and me. And you are my best friend, and so of course I want you to be involved and help me plan it. Just don’t get carried away!’