with school events, so I have to go myself. I used to make a point of talking about ‘MY HUSBAND’ in a loud voice on such occasions, but since my husband never actually materialised I have stopped doing that, as I am afraid that all the teachers think I am a crazy fantasist who has invented a husband for some reason and only wears a wedding ring to affect some strange 1950s notion of ‘respectability’.
Anyway, the children were at least dispatched without further ado – Peter’s teacher is a rather sweet young trainee, but judging by her rather tight and low-cut sweater, there might be a sudden influx of daddies in that class volunteering to take part in school events, and Jane has a new teacher as well – an actual man is teaching in the primary school. Well, I say a man. In truth he is more of a boy – when I saw him in the playground I actually thought he was only slightly taller than an average Year 6.
I suppose this will start happening to me more and more now. First I think the teachers look terribly young, next thing I will be complaining how youthful the policemen are and then insisting I want to see a ‘proper doctor’ as I don’t believe the whippersnapper before me can possibly be properly qualified. Actually, this has almost happened already – the last time I took Judgy to the vet I was unconvinced they had given me a real vet, such was the youth of the Man Child before me. I realised, of course, that clearly he WAS a proper vet, and a highly knowledgeable and skilled one when he exclaimed, ‘Well, that’s a fine wee terrier you’ve got there!’ Anyone who can recognise my dog’s superiority clearly knows his stuff.
Thursday, 8 September
Oh, fuckety fuckety doodah. The interview is tomorrow. TOMORROW. I am not ready for this – what was I thinking? Why would some cool, futuristic, space-age company employ ME? They do not want someone like me who is already complaining that the teachers and doctors and policemen are very young, they want those very young people who should clearly still be at school. At least after much browsing I have found something to wear. I had to go for the stupidly high heels, because I tried a slightly-cropped-pants-with-ankle-boots look in the hope it would make me look like a millennial, but it just made me look like I’d got dressed in the dark and couldn’t find my socks or any pants that fitted. The girls on Pinterest didn’t look like that. Christ, I can’t even pull off dressing as a millennial, so how on earth am I going to pull this off?
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 bathroom 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 WIENER! 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 pants binged out of a shiny elevator to collect me and shook his head in disappointment at my extortionately expensive virtuous coffee. (What is it with the too-short pants, 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 takeout 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 dick 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 dick and balls off the wall before the officialdom came in? Literally all I could think about now was the dick 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
