day, and ‘It is Monday night, darling, and it’s not like it’s actually a special birthday, is it?’
No, no, he’s quite right, it’s not a special birthday, because it’s only my birthday. Everyone else in this house gets special birthdays every year, because I bloody well make sure they are special, but no one ever thinks to repay the favour for me.
Tuesday, 13 September
Well, I don’t know what the significance of the cock and balls in the interview room was, but whatever it was there for, I passed the test (either that or the other candidates reacted to it even worse than I did – perhaps they added spurting jizz and pubes?). Anyway, the whys are not important. What is important is that I got a SECOND INTERVIEW. It’s next Monday, which should give me plenty of time to prepare, and even better, it’s with their head of development who is currently in California, so it’s a phone interview and I don’t have to worry about what to wear! There was a horrible moment when I thought it might be a video call, and I would have to find a non-scabby corner of my house to sit in and look executivey, but they said just an ordinary conference call with the Very Important Man and Morose Ed would be fine, so I don’t even have to put make-up on and can fish crumbs out of my bra mid-conversation if need be! Happy belated birthday to me! Maybe my family is indifferent to me, but at least the universe or karma or something is on my side.
Wednesday, 14 September
Oh buggering bollocking arseholing twatbums. Tonight was ‘Meet the Teacher Night’. Everyone knows that even if your child has had the same teacher for the last three years, you have to go along to Meet the Teacher Night (although you don’t actually get to Meet the Teacher – you get to sit on a tiny chair and watch a PowerPoint presentation about the curriculum that will in fact bear no resemblance whatsoever to what your child will really learn about over the coming year), because if you don’t you are Judged, both by the Unmet Teacher and by the other parents, who will notice your absence. And of course, despite the fact that most people have more sense than to shell out for a babysitter to enable them both to go to the Meet the Teacher Night, there is always at least one extremely smug and enthusiastic couple there together, who hold up all the proceedings by asking inane questions about how the teacher might deal with completely hypothetical situations. Meanwhile the rest of us attempt not to roll our eyes or face palm because these tits are causing tedious delays until the moment when we can pop home and sink face first into a large gin.
I thought I was being nice by giving Katie a lift to Meet the Teacher Night, so she didn’t feel daunted walking into the school by herself, but it turned out that this was a foolish thing to do, because although Katie is very lovely, and also a kindred spirit, which is nice to have living across the road, she is also a much better person than me, as well as still being naive and innocent in matters of playground politics.
Thus it was that when we walked into the school foyer together and found Fiona Montague and Perfect Lucy Atkinson’s Perfect Mummy standing there, brandishing clipboards menacingly as they attempted to sign people up for the PTA, instead of sidling past with a feeble excuse and trying not to make eye contact, Katie stopped and said she would LOVE to hear more about the PTA.
‘Oh, that sounds marvellous!’ said Katie with enthusiasm. ‘I mean, who wouldn’t want to help raise funds for the school? And I expect it is also a really good way to meet other parents, isn’t it?’
Lucy’s Mummy and Fiona brightly assured Katie that yes, indeed, it was an excellent way for someone new to the school to meet other parents, probably much the best way there was.
‘And what about you, Ellen?’ suggested Katie, ‘You’ll join too, won’t you, and keep me on the right track, stop me making any terrible playground-politics faux pas? I don’t really know how all this works, but you must be an old hand by now.’
‘Errr,’ I said desperately. ‘Well, the thing is …’
‘What’s wrong, Ellen? Don’t you want to help raise money for the school?’ asked Katie with wide-eyed innocence.
‘Yes, of course I do,’ I protested indignantly. ‘And I am already on the list of people who have agreed to help at actual events. I’m just not totally sure that I’m really a committee person, that’s all!’
‘Oh, there’s nothing to it!’ said Lucy’s Mummy.
‘It really takes hardly any time at all!’ chirped Fiona.
‘Think of the children!’ begged Katie.
And so somehow, after seven years of cunningly avoiding joining the PTA, I found myself agreeing to go along to the AGM and even to consider a committee role, as long as it wasn’t Treasurer, in case I accidently embezzled the money and had to go to prison while the children featured in a Sad Face article in the Daily Mail.
Simon laughed like a drain when I told him of this when I got home, and reminded me of how, when Jane first started school, I had been so terrified of being forced to join the PTA that I had had a series of distressing dreams in which I was attending PTA coffee mornings or committee meetings, only to find that I was stark bollock naked. Sometimes I fear that Simon is not as supportive a husband as he could be. I also really hope that there was nothing prophetic about all my naked PTA dreams – no strangers need to see a woman of my age naked, no matter what Trinny and Susannah used to claim as they made those poor unlucky women strip off while they jiggled their boobs. Thinking about it, that was such a weird programme. Who thought going on it would be a good idea? ‘I know, I’m not very confident, and I don’t like my clothes, so I’ll go on national telly and let a pair of poshos grab my tits, before advising me that a nice scarf will be the end to all my woes!’ It was probably the thin end of the wedge that led to programmes like Embarrassing Bodies, when people who claim they are too ashamed to go to the doctors are quite happy to whip their suppurating cocks out on camera (I once made the mistake of watching a clap special of Embarrassing Bodies. On the plus side, I lost three pounds, as it put me off my dinner for days).
Monday, 19 September
Aaaargh! Today is my second interview, by phone, and oh happy days, Simon is sick. Really sick. Not just with a sniffle, or a cold, or a bit of cough. He is terribly, dreadfully debilitated, and it is touch and go whether he will make it. He sits hunched over his laptop, wrapped in his nastiest and most synthetic fleece, googling and googling his symptoms, finding ever more terminal diagnoses and wondering aloud every five minutes whether he should call NHS 24 or an ambulance. In between he groans dramatically, or coughs feebly.
‘You have man flu!’ I said unsympathetically.
Simon moaned pathetically. ‘I think it might be Zika virus,’ he whimpered.
‘How can you have Zika virus? You haven’t been anywhere with Zika!’ I pointed out briskly.
‘I was in London last week. There was a woman on the Tube who kept coughing. That could be where I caught it.’
‘No, darling, you did not catch Zika on the Tube, because it is not an airborne virus. It is spread by the special Zika mosquitoes. And anyway, Zika is only serious if you are a pregnant woman, and last time I looked, my love, you were neither a woman nor pregnant! So I think perhaps you might be malingering a little and making something of a meal out of the fact that you are suffering from a common fucking cold!’
‘I’m sure I have a fever,’ Simon mewed, still tapping away at Dr Google. ‘Can you take my temperature? Ebola is airborne. Maybe I’ve got Ebola. The first symptoms are a fever, a headache, joint and muscle
