Why Mummy Doesn’t Give a ****

I woke up in a panic, dry-mouthed and heart racing, convinced I’d slept through the alarm and that the removal men were here already. They weren’t, of course, because it was only 3.43 am, but as it was the sixth time I’d woken up like that, the chances of me actually sleeping through the alarm increased every time, and thus so did the panic. It didn’t help that in the brief snatches of sleep I’d managed in between waking up I’d dreamt that the removal men turned up but nothing was packed and so we couldn’t move, and then in another much, much worse dream, that they turned up, that everything I owned was neatly boxed up, that I was smoothly and seamlessly directing operations as they loaded their lorry, only to make the hideous discovery, while I was standing in the front garden watching two burly sorts lug out the sofa, that I was stark bollock naked, and everyone had been too polite to say anything, but there was every chance the removal men were traumatised for life by the sight of a forty-five-year-old woman standing in the street, tits jiggling, reminding them to be careful with the sideboard as it was a family heirloom.

Actually, I don’t even know why the sideboard was in my dream. I don’t have it anymore. It was Simon’s granny’s, so he’s got it. Admittedly, he didn’t really want it and had harboured an unreasonable hatred for it ever since I’d attempted to ‘shabby chic’ it up and painted it a lovely eau de nil, but I was determined to be fair, and so I insisted he took the sideboard. It was definitely fairness that made me let him have the sideboard and not a malicious amusement at thinking how pissed off he’d be every time he looked at it, nor a sadistic pleasure in thinking how it would ruin the minimalist effect he could finally achieve in his new flat but, because it was his grandmother’s, he’d be stuck with it.

After Simon’s announcement that he was moving out to ‘give us some space’, I didn’t hang around. I’ve seen too many friends and colleagues put in the same position, with their partner buggering off, assuring them it was ‘only temporary’ to give them ‘time to think’. They went off to ‘think’, and then a month down the line the joint accounts were emptied, there was a lawyer’s letter on the doormat and an estate agent at the door announcing they were there to do a valuation, because the ‘temporary thinking time’ was just a ruse to allow them to move out with minimal hassle while sorting out their financial affairs to their own benefit.

I wasn’t going to be caught on the hop like that. The next day, when I checked our bank accounts and found that Simon had withdrawn a considerable sum – apparently to cover the rent on Geoff’s flat, as it had turned out that Geoff wasn’t letting him house sit rent free, as Simon had implied – and after listening to Simon’s excuses that the joint account was ‘living expenses’ and me pointing out that it was his choice to move out into an expensive flat and why the fuck should I be part-funding that, I called the estate agents and the lawyers, removed my share from the remains of the joint accounts and got the ball rolling. Unfortunately, our house turned out to have gone up in value since we bought it, and neither of us could afford to buy the other out, so it had to be sold, all while Simon bleated on that I was being too hasty and he hadn’t meant this to be permanent.

Competitively priced family homes in catchment areas for decent schools tend to sell fast, though – rather faster than I’d expected, leaving me without much time to find somewhere for me and the children to go. And so, I find myself lying awake, staring at the ceiling, contemplating a future where I’ll not be growing old with Simon in a little stone cottage with roses round the door. However, on the plus side, I will be growing old in a little stone cottage with roses round the door. That is what I need to focus on – the positives, not the negatives. The fact is that Simon had always baulked at my visions of quaint and rustic cottages, and muttered darkly about energy efficiency, and lack of double glazing, and low ceilings (surely the low ceilings would make it easier to heat, as I used to point out). He’d tut and point out all the flaws in the survey reports of the Dream Houses I showed him, sighing over wet rot and dry rot and rising damp and crumbling pointing, crying, ‘Money pit! Money pit!’ as I cried, ‘Character and soul! IT HAS CHARACTER AND SOUL! What’s a little mildew compared with THAT?’

As an architect, Simon was always able to trump me (a mere ‘computer person’, as he used to refer to my job) on all things house by hurling technical words around and citing the terrible costs of a new roof (according to him, every house I fell in love with would need a new roof, despite the clearly functional and vintagely slated roof having done perfectly well for over a hundred years), and so, one by one, my dreams were crushed under the weight of tedious practicalities.

But now, Simonless, with no unfaithful naysayer crushing my visions of stone-flagged kitchens and mullioned windows anymore, I’ve found the cottage of my dreams, and we’re moving in today. Well, it’s possibly not quite the Cottage of My Dreams. My finances didn’t entirely stretch to that, despite a small stroke of luck in my batshit-mental ex-sister-in-law Louisa deciding her latest blow struck against the patriarchy would be to become a lesbian and move to a women’s commune with her new lover Isabel, thus finally vacating the house I’d been emotionally blackmailed into buying for her several years earlier. My lingering resentment at being forced to bankroll Louisa’s feckless lifestyle with the profits of the one financially successful thing I’ve ever achieved, my lovely app called Why Mummy Drinks, obviously in no way contributed to the breakdown of things with Simon at all. But she’s gone, her (my) house is sold, and the resulting cash injection added to my share of the Marital Home meant I was able to afford to buy a Vaguely Dreamish Cottage, with not too crippling a mortgage. Hurrah! It will be magical. If you overlook the damp. Which is probably nothing that can’t be painted over. And the fact that I didn’t have much time to wait around for the perfect house to come on the market so, to afford a house with a garden for Judgy Dog and three bedrooms for the children and me, I’ve had to move miles out of town.

But anyway. I shall have a vegetable garden, and look adorable in wellies and an unfeasible amount of Cath Kidston prints (well, probably not real Cath Kidston, as it’s very bloody expensive and I’m a Single Mother now, but I can probably find some affordable knock-offs on eBay). I’m going to keep chickens – Speckled Sussexes, I’ve decided, because I liked the name and when I googled them they were described as very chatty chickens. Who even needs a man when you have chatty chickens? I just have to hope that Judgy Dog does not attempt to eat my chatty chickens. I’ve had stern words with him to this effect, but he just gave me one of his ‘I’m paying no attention to your foolish witterings, woman, and I shall do as I please’ looks. Luckily, Judgy being my dog, having got him somewhat against Simon’s will, despite Simon coming to love him almost as much as I do, there was no question of who got Judgy in the divorce. I’d probably have let him have Peter and Jane if he’d really wanted, but I’d have fought tooth and nail for sole custody of Judgy …

Peter and Jane are not entirely enamoured of my Splendid Plan to move to the country. Although in actual fact we’re not moving that far into the country, we’re still (just) within the catchment area for their school, so they’ll not be further traumatised by changing schools, as well as being from a Broken Home (do people even still say that? I just remember, in Coronation Street, Tracy Barlow shouting about coming from a Broken Home at Ken and Deirdre when they had one of their frequent divorces – not that it really mattered with Ken and Deirdre, of course, as they’d be back together again by the Omnibus).

Despite this, the children were still horrified at living ‘out in the sticks’ and the lack of late buses to transport them home from parties and bouts of underage drinking. Well, at fifteen, I suspect Jane at least has been dabbling somewhat with the Bacardi Breezers, or whatever over-sugared shit the Youth of Today drink. Peter is only thirteen, so hopefully I’ve a year or so’s grace before he too starts on the path of depravity. I live in hope, however, that they might both yet declare themselves to be teetotallers, as I’ve been a Terrible Warning rather than a Good Example when it comes to the Evils of Drink. I attempted to placate them with rash promises of providing plenty of lifts home, and brightly reminded them that every second weekend they’d be staying over at their dad’s flat in town, and so it would be a) his problem and b) nice and easy to get home from parties and the dubious pubs that serve underage teenagers. Simon was there when I announced this, and I must say he did not look entirely thrilled at the prospect.

He has meanwhile found his Dream Flat, the minimalist White Box he’s hankered after for years. He’d practically drool while watching Grand Designs whenever anyone built one of those spare, modern cubes as a house, as he looked round our cluttered sitting room and sighed in despair. There were some rows about his flat too, because, as I pointed out, he could not buy an open-plan loft, because he needed somewhere for his CHILDREN to sleep when they came to stay – something that did not seem to have occurred to him. He finally grudgingly compromised on somewhere that had one decent-sized bedroom, one small room he announced he’d use as a study and put a futon in for Jane (I didn’t know you even still got futons – I thought they had vanished after the Nineties, along with my youth and the perkiness of my tits), and what he optimistically called a ‘boxroom’ for Peter, which Peter and I called a ‘cupboard’. Apart from having to shut his only son and heir in a cupboard every second weekend, from the photos it looks like an annoyingly nice flat, although the sideboard will look bloody awful there, so ha!

Anyway, I might as well get up and have a cup of tea in peace, before starting the lengthy and painful process of trying to prise two teenagers from their pits. There’s a part of me that wonders if it would be easier to just leave them in their beds and let the removal men load them onto the lorry and install them still slumbering in their new rooms at the other end. And also, how long would it actually take them to notice they were in a different house? In fairness, Peter would notice almost straight away when he walked towards the fridge on autopilot, ready to inhale the entire contents in the name of a ‘snack’, and found it in a different location, thus delaying his ‘snack’ by an essential and life-threatening thirty seconds.

It’s a strange feeling to think that this is the last time I’ll wake up in this house. There have been a lot of ‘last times’ over the previous few days. Some of them have been quite sad, like the last time I’d say goodnight to the children in the rooms they’ve slept in since they were tiny. Peter and Jane were less moved by my tearful attempts to tuck them in last night, saying that I was being weird and telling me to go away. Other last times were less sad. The last time I had to adjust the rug to hide the mark on the floor where Judgy puked and his stomach acid stripped the varnish from the floorboards. The last time I’ll ever bang my hip on the stupidly placed cupboard in the kitchen. The last time I’ll have to wipe the countertops and ignore the large chunk out of the surface where Jane threw a knife at Peter in a fit of rage, probably because of some heinous transgression such as looking at her.

But this isn’t the time to dwell on last times. It’s a time for FIRST times, for new beginnings and fresh starts! I hope Judgy Dog isn’t too outraged by the upheaval and settles into his new home all right.

Saturday, 7 April

Well. We’re here. And I’m slowly getting to grips with the chaos and trying to tackle the mountains of boxes!

Yesterday was … interesting. As predicted, Peter and Jane were almost impossible to shift from their beds. Once they were up, they wandered around aimlessly, getting under everyone’s feet, as Peter attempted to unpack bowls and cereal so he could have another breakfast and Jane screamed that I’d ruined her life by having the Wi-Fi disconnected in the old house, and what did I MEAN, it might not be connected in the new house until Monday, and how did I not know about the strength of the 4G signal at the new house, and WHY WOULD I EVEN DO THAT TO HER, and Peter drank all the milk so I couldn’t even give the removal men a cup of tea, so I had to send him to the shop to get more, while he looked at me pityingly and explained that we were meant to be moving and getting rid of stuff, Mum, not buying more, and I howled that if he didn’t get on his bike and get to the shop and return with a pint of milk in the next three minutes, I was taking all his carefully boxed-up possessions, including all his games consoles, and giving them to a charity shop, and if he answered me back one more fucking time I might give him away too, in the unlikely event of anyone actually wanting him. The removal men meanwhile observed all this, expressionless, until Peter muttered something about ‘Don’t mind her, it’s probably her age, and the Change of Life’ as he huffed out the door in search of milk and the removal men all sniggered. Bastards.

Finally – finally – everything was loaded onto the lorry, despite my helpful suggestions about the order in which they might want to put it on, and that maybe if they put the sofa on the other side they could pile more boxes around it. The Chief Removal Man finally said, ‘Look, love, we do know what we’re doing. We do it every day,’ and I quietly seethed about being called ‘love’ because it’s one of my pet hates, especially from an unfamiliar man who is talking down to me (although I suppose he might have had a point about knowing how to pack his lorry better than me), but I didn’t dare say anything in case they decided that they wouldn’t move all my worldly possessions after all on account of me being a snowflake feminist bitch and then I’d be left sitting in the middle of the road with a big pile of boxes and two angry teenagers.

We set off, me chirping, ‘Isn’t this FUN, darlings! A splendid new adventure! We’re going to be SO HAPPY in the new house, I just KNOW it!’ while the children slumped in the back seat and complained it was SO UNFAIR that I hadn’t let one of them sit in the front because Judgy had already called shotgun (it’s his favourite seat – he likes to look out of the window for cats), and I pointed out that I might have let one of them sit there if World War Fucking Three didn’t break out over whose turn it is to sit there every single bastarding time we get in the car, and would they please just CHEER UP ALREADY, because this was a LOVELY FRESH START and we were going to be VERY FUCKING HAPPY.

As we turned out of the street for the last time ever (well, in reality it probably wasn’t the last time ever, because my friend Katie still lives across the road, and so I’ll probably be back to visit her, but it was still a Symbolic Last Time Ever), the new people who had bought the house turned into it. I accelerated slightly, lest they spotted me in the distance and tried to come after me to enquire about the Smell in Peter’s room. I’d cleaned the house, I really had, and in truth it was probably the cleanest it had ever been since we’d moved in, but nothing I did, not shampooing the carpets, not liberal quantities of Febreeze, not all the TKMaxx scented candles in the world could entirely shift that musty, fusty, Teenage Boy Pong from Peter’s room.

When people were viewing the house I had to open his windows as wide as they would go, empty half a can of air freshener into the room and hope the stench would be masked for long enough to dupe any potential buyers, but within half an hour the smell would start seeping back – an unpleasant combination of sweaty socks, BO, a hint of stale jizz and something undefinable that can only be described as Boy, all pulled together with a generous helping of Lynx. It just seems to be something teenage boys emit, however clean they are, however often you boil-wash their towels and bedding, however many hours they spend in the shower, however many cans of deodorant they empty under each pit (‘Darling, seriously, you just need a quick squirt under each arm, you don’t need to spray clouds and clouds of the damn stuff till we’re all choking on a chemical cloud that whiffs of broken teenage dreams and sexual frustration’) and however often you surreptitiously check under the bed to see if the source of the stench is a crusty wank sock stashed under there. So far I’ve been spared this horror, I presume because I discreetly provide a never-ending supply of Mansize tissues – I was so shocked when I finally realised what Mansize tissues were for (I’d thought it was just because Kleenex assumed men were snottier than ladies).

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.