like the rest of the population of the planet!’
Mia Robinson burst into tears. ‘I don’t want to be the only one left alive!’ she sobbed. ‘What about my hamster? Can hamsters survive nuclear apocalypses?’
‘No,’ said Jane. Mia sobbed harder, and proved quite inconsolable. Melanie had to be summonsed to comfort her and assure her that there was no chance of a nuclear holocaust any time soon, and the orienteering was just a bit of fun, and her hamster would be fine, yes and her mum and dad too.
While Melanie was doing this, her own orienteering group managed to wander off and get lost somewhere in the woods and a search party had to be launched. The other Scout leaders were quite judgemental of Melanie for losing her Scouts, and I fear she blames me for all this. We were summonsed to a singalong this evening and we had to sing some complicated clapping song where you also had to clap the hand of the person next to you, and I’m pretty sure that Melanie didn’t need to slap my hand nearly as hard as she did. Hopefully there will be no beetles tonight, as I think she might do more than slap me if I have to wake her up. I’m sure there were no beetles at Glastonbury – it’s probably the wrong kind of mud here that attracts them. I wonder if I am too old to go to Glastonbury again? Do they let in fortysomethings? Could I even hack the pace, or would I just die? I mean, obviously one could no longer dabble in illegal substances, because one is middle-aged and respectable, and all the hard cider would make me need to pee all the time because I’ve had two children and my bladder is not what it was, and I’m not sure I could cope with festival toilets anymore. Maybe I would have to go to one of the Old People’s Festivals, like Rewind or something? I wonder if they have better toilets? But they are often billed as being ‘family friendly’, and if I have escaped my own cherubs to get sloshed and behave badly for the weekend, the last thing I want is Other People’s Children roaming around. Oh God, I am a terrible person. Melanie can probably tell, and that’s why she hates me. As well as the whole traumatising one of her Scouts and making her lose six others thing, obviously.
Sunday, 7 August
I am home! I am washed! Eventually. Oh, the bliss. Sort of.
This morning, after Dicing with Death with the Stove of Doom and dispensing frankly revolting eggy bread to the girls, who didn’t seem to care, we took the tents down. Melanie was relieved to find that I am not totally useless, and could at least work out that to take the tent down, you simply reverse the putting-up procedure, and it all went relatively smoothly, despite the Scouts’ best efforts to get trapped in the middle of collapsing tents. We didn’t lose any more girls, and I managed not to upset any more of them, which was just as well, as Melanie was up several times in the night with Mia having nightmares. Hopefully she won’t tell Mia’s parents that it was me who has caused her fears of the Nuclear Winter. Something has bitten me in an unspeakable place, though. I suspect the killer beetle.
On arriving home with a grubby and sleep-deprived Jane, I was hopeful that Simon and Peter might have kept the home fires burning in my absence. I may lack Scouting Spirit, but sometimes I am an incurable optimist. Sadly, my optimism was misplaced, as the house was a pit of fucking hell. I would go so far as to say squalid. I am not going to be an optimist anymore, I have decided, I am going to be a pessimist. It seems a much better idea. A pessimist will only ever either be proved right or pleasantly surprised – there is no disappointment lurking for pessimists the way there is for optimists.
Simon was the picture of injured innocence as I shouted about why was there underwear strewn in places that underwear ought not to be, and no one had emptied the trash or flushed the toilet, let alone removed the skidmarks or wiped the counters, and instead of putting away the clean dishes in the dishwasher to make room for the dirty ones, they had simply taken to piling the dirty dishes on the countertop above the dishwasher, waiting hopefully for the Magical Bastarding Dishwasher Fairy to wave her wand and furnish them with clean bowls.
‘What exactly have you done while I have been gone?’ I ranted. ‘And DON’T say “Looked after Peter”. He is hardly a baby that needs constant tending.’
‘Actually, darling,’ said Simon with irritating smugness, ‘I have cleaned out the fridge and sorted through the cupboards and thrown out everything that was out of date.’
I went cold. ‘You have done what?’ I said in horror.
I flung open the cupboards. All the spices – gone!
‘Some of them were two years out of date,’ said Simon indignantly.
I whimpered.
The cupboard full of posh rice and pasta and the token bag of quinoa, because middle-class – empty.
‘FOUR years!’ Simon informed me. ‘The quinoa was four years out of date! It hadn’t even been opened! And the risotto rice expired last month, and the red carmargue rice was two months out of date, and there was a packet of funny shaped pasta that went off six months ago. And there was a can of spaghetti hoops that was SIX years out of date!’
‘These things don’t go off,’ I said furiously. ‘Spices are MEANT to be out of date! Nobody has in-date spices, the people who say you should throw them out after six months are just trying to trick you. When they start tasting like dust is when they are getting GOOD. And pasta and rice are clearly edible for months after the arbitrary date on the packet and now I will have to waste money buying more quinoa for no one to eat, because if we have no quinoa in the cupboard are we even middle-class? And canned stuff NEVER goes bad. NEVER! That is why people hoard cans for after the nuclear apocalypse. If there is a nuclear apocalypse tonight, we needn’t bother trying to survive, because we will all starve anyway because YOU THREW OUT MY EMERGENCY SPAGHETTI HOOPS!’
‘I think you’re over-reacting again, darling.’ smirked Simon. ‘Look in the fridge.’
I opened the fridge. No jam. No ketchup. No mayonnaise. Not a single vegetable. The three tubs of antiquated houmous that were looking increasingly menacing and I was actually quite scared to touch had also vanished, which was something.
‘All out of date,’ beamed Simon.
‘The potatoes?’
‘Out of date yesterday.’
‘Carrots, onions, garlic?’
‘Gone, gone, gone!’
‘But there was nothing wrong with them. Unless they are actually sprouting, going green or decomposing, they are absolutely fine.’
‘Out of date! Out of date!’ insisted Simon. ‘They had to go.’
‘FML,’ I muttered. ‘Well, I suppose we’re getting a takeout for dinner, then. And where is the ham? That wasn’t out of date.’
‘No, but it said eat within two days of opening and it had been open for more than two days, so out it went.’
‘FFS!’ I said. ‘Literally NO ONE pays any attention to that. NO ONE! I am going to have a shower and scrape off field residue, and you can go to the shop and BUY SOME FUCKING FOOD.’
‘But I’ve been busy sorting all this out and looking after Peter all weekend! Even though, really, sorting out the fridge and cupboards should be your job, now you’re not working, but I did it for you anyway.’ protested Simon. ‘Can’t you pop to the shop?’
‘Firstly, I AM working, I am trying to build myself a new career, I’m hardly sitting around reading magazines and eating bonbons all
