Judy came. She brought her baby who is the sweetest baby in the world with blonde hair, chubbly legs and big blue eyes. She is perfect.
We met up at Tate Modern and we admired the crack. What is the crack? I found the depth of the crack more interesting than the length and the way it split of at angles and then petered out quite satisfactory. Is this a comment on London’s housing stock? Some houses in Springfield Road have similar cracks. Claire and Paul have filled in all the cracks in their house with exterior grade polyfilla and now they have been offered the asking price by a cash buying trustafarian. The move to Stalybridge is imminent.
The crack is clearly a fault line. Is it a comment on the Tate itself? On the art establishment? On Irish pubs? We mulled it over and then went to have a rather delicious lunch in the cafe overlooking the Thames. I love The Tate.
John was very pleased to see Judy, so was Maisie. Judy and her baby stayed the night and the next day John and I drove her home to South London.
I understand that some people believe South London has some nice bits but actually it mostly has horrible bits with huge arterial roads bisecting vast areas of bomb damage, interspersed with scruffy little High Streets occupied by people without hope or aspirations. That’s where Judy lives anyway, so I told her to stop being so silly and to get a job across the river where it is much more aesthetic.
After we dropped Judy at her house John and I took Evil for a walk on Blackheath and we had lunch there too. Black heath is not London it is actually Chichester or Guildford. I saw some people wearing Barbours.
Later we came home and lolled about drinking tea before remembering we had to go to a party.
The party was fun. We sat on the sofa a bit and talked to Ellis and to Paul and Claire. Claire is obsessed with the move to Stalybridge and I told her that as it was North we wouldn’t be able to visit her as we only ever go South or West. Claire said she didn’t mind as she would spend lots of time in London. Then I talked to a man from South London and I told him it was horrid and he said ‘Brockley is very nice and North London has The Holloway Road so you needn’t be so superior.’ I have no idea where Brockley is.
I talked to another man who was wearing very high waisted trousers. He keeps bees in his garden. The bees only fly in straight lines and if you get in their way they sting you. The man’s neighbours have to carry special anti histamine pens to inject themselves if they are stung because it has happened so often they are sensitised.
All the women at the party were wearing skirts that were too short for their ages. Claire wore a mini skirt she’d bought in Stalybridge. I was wearing a stupid girly dress from Whistles that was far too short, so fitted in nicely. A band played jazz in the kitchen. They were three teenaged boys and they played very well, When all the women in the inappropriately short skirts started to do drunk dancing the band played looking at their feet.
At 11.30 Abigail came to pick us up because she had been out to a club in Soho and had forgotten her key. She said the party was very embarrassing. I thought it had it’s good points. Ellis stayed until 4 am and the man from Brockley was rude to Claire.
There are food moths in our utility room. The utility room is also our larder. I was hand washing one of John’s jumpers in the butler sink and something fell on my head and wiggled a bit. I screamed and ran into the playroom. Zac looked up from his game of killing to say ‘Oh you’ve got a maggot on your shoulder.’
Much later I went back into the utility room and saw that there were lots of maggots on the ceiling and horrible little food moths on the walls.
Where are they coming from? Why does this sort of thing happen to me? I hoovered up the maggots and threw all the bags of flour and pasta in the bin.
When we lived in our old house there were food moths everywhere but I didn’t know what they were. I fed the children brown rice because we were very healthy in those days and sometimes I would see a dead moth floating in the rice water so I would scoop it out. One day I looked in the rice bag and saw that it was heaving with maggots. Ever since then I have hated food moths.
The day after the party John, Abigail, Maise and me went out for lunch with Ellis and his daughters, Hannah and Hetty. Ellis said he needed an Indian because of the hangover. Abigail said John couldn’t have one because of his diet. We went to a Mexican.
John ordered a steak and Abigail ordered a small bowl of refried beans. Abigail said John’s steak was ‘butters.’ Hannah and Hetty didn’t know what ‘butters’ meant because they go to a selective state school and so are very intelligent and well educated with vocabularies.
Maisie said, ‘I think my nose is my best feature and that one day I will be discovered and I will be famous.’
Hetty told us that every morning the bee man from the party opens his shutters, naked, and stands there with his legs apart. He lives opposite them and his bedroom looks directly into theirs. Hannah said ‘When that happens I just drop to the floor like a stone and crawl out the door so he doesn’t get embarrassed.’ Abigail thought that was ‘butters’ too.
Today I found 9 damp towels in the children’s bathroom.
‘It’s not fair.’ I said ‘ I have to do all the washing and you lot just help yourselves to another towel as if you lived in a bloody hotel with bloody laundry service and I was a bloody chamber maid.’
‘ Well, it wasn’t me.’ said Zac ‘I haven’t had a bath for ages.’
‘ And I have to mend everything.’ I continued ‘Abigail, when you pull the doorknob off the bathroom door the least you could do is to go and get a screwdriver and put it back on again. You just left it lying on the floor.’
She said ‘Actually I didn’t pull it off the door. It just came off in my hand so someone else must have pulled it off earlier and then just slid it back on again and I don’t know how to work a screwdriver.’
Maisie said ‘I couldn’t have left a wet towel in the children’s bathroom because you always pick my towels up after I have used them and you probably put them away where they belong.’
5th February
Surprise Party
Today is John’s surprise party. My cousins are coming and so are Ellis and Paul. Claire will be in Stalybridge. Fraser and Bella are coming too.
I have made a card for John with a pink heart on it. Maisie has made him one with Doctor Who.
I am a bit worried about the surprise party because John said he didn’t want one and I said ‘Well you’re not having one, we are going out to dinner.’ One of my cousins said ‘See you on Tuesday.’ to John the other day so he thinks they are coming out to dinner with us.
Really there will be silver balloons and food from Ottolenghi and a Tarte from En Compagne. I hope he likes it.
This morning I walked Maisie to school with Paul and his daughter Billie. I will miss walking to school with Paul. He said that the cash buying trustafarian hadn’t got back to them and that the bottom had fallen out of the housing market. And he said that he used to know the bee man from the party and that he was very Russian about nakedness and was probably not flashing at Hannah and Hetty as he read a lot of Dostoevski.
I said ‘What?’ I’ve never read Dostoevski. I didn’t know that Russians were especially naked, I thought they wore a lot of fur and it was Finns who were naked. I have, however, been flashed at three times.
Paul is a good criminal defence lawyer, he is very clever and went to Cambridge a year early.
Wednesday 6th February 2008
The Day After
John is 50 and 1 day old. he looks exactly the same, only tired. John’s editor bought him an iPhone and he was very happy.
The surprise party was so exciting. We stationed one child by the front door, one on the stairs down to the kitchen and one by the kitchen door.
‘He’s coming !’ they whispered and there was the sound of a key in the lock. We all hid behind the kitchen units.
‘Surprise ! Happy birthday !’ We all had a lovely time. I didn’t buy enough wine because I thought everyone would want to go to bed early but they didn’t. We ate Ottolenghi food and talked and listened to music. The children took all the silver balloons into the playroom and breathed in the helium, then they came squeaking into the kitchen. Paul told Ellis’ youngest child to ‘Bugger off and stop squeaking in my face.’ Ellis was cross. This morning Paul ‘phoned and he said he was worried that Ellis was cross with him. Ellis texted me and said he thought Paul was cross with him for being cross. How sweet they are.
Ellis is in love with an artist but he says he can’t have sex with him because his feet are too small. I said
‘Is it true about feet size then?’
And he said ‘Yes, apart from in the case of Indian men where there seems to be no correlation.’
I said ‘Have you had sex with lots of Indian men then?’
And he said “No of course not. I used to be an anaesthetist in Wales and the first thing we did once we’d got a patient unconscious was to check their size.’
I said ‘Oh, that’s not a very comforting thought is it, for all those people having operations?’
He said ‘They were unconscious, so they didn’t know. Anyway it might have just been a Cardiff thing.’
I quite often ask Ellis about sex as I’ve only been to bed with two men, but I think I get a slightly skewed version from him. In fact Ellis is quite restrained sexually. I think he is too fussy. Judy says that her gay friend, Neal, says he doesn’t do small talk and prefers to just get down to it. My other gay friend, Jan, says he once went to a torture club wearing a rubber vest and chaps. Jan looks quite scary without a rubber vest and chaps. I don’t think Ellis is availing himself of all the opportunities being a single gay man in London affords him. He says it’s because of the children but I can’t see how that’s true as they all love the artist and couldn’t care less how small his feet are.
On the way to school this morning Maisie saw that the perfect doctors were having a load of wood delivered to their house. I said
‘Oh look at that. I wonder what they are building with all that wood.’
Maisie said, “They are going to build something beautiful like an amazing playhouse. Their children will do wonderful designs and drawings all over it and they will use organic paint.’
I said ‘Will they?’
Maisie tossed her gilded head and spun away down the pavement on her little red scooter calling back over her shoulder “Yes because they are better at things than us.’
I need to clear up the kitchen. I will do it later. There is a dead hamster in the middle of the lawn. I didn’t know what it was at first but I have just been to check and it’s a fat dead hamster. Buddy is embarrassing. Maybe if I leave it there he will take it away. More likely he will take it up to Abigail’s room and put it on her bed. I wonder whose hamster it is.
7th February 2008
Hamster
Liposuction.
Botox
10 am. The hamster is still there. I thought a fox would have taken it over night. It’s the least the foxes could do, they are always yipping and wailing in the garden at night and once, one stole my clog but when it comes to hamsters they are obviously too sniffy. I’ll have to move it later.
John weighed himself this morning and said ‘I am almost down to 17 stone.’
I said ‘When my book is published I’m going to have a nose job and Liposuction.’
John stared at me for a minute then said ‘Why?’ I don’t know why. It’s for the same reason that I have Botox and hair straightening and am constantly on a diet. I don’t know what the reasons are but I feel that they are the same. So I said ‘I’m not really going to.’
John said ‘When your book is published I’m going to have hippo suction. I am going to interview Alison Goldfrapp today. Do you know where my Boss suit is and will you iron me a shirt?’
I got a letter from my father this morning. He had enclosed an article from the Guardian that said you could die from Botox. I already knew that of course because the story had been covered in The Sun days ago. Apparently 16 people have died of Botox in America and the writer appeared to think that most Botox injections are administered by dentists and that it migrates to the lungs. Mine are administered by a dermatologist and he was on Fern and Philip yesterday saying he thought sun beds should be banned. (I must stop going on sun beds). Does that honestly sound like the kind of person that would inject out of control, migratory Botox to unsuspecting North London housewives? I bet more people in America are killed by their underwear than are killed by Botox and my father has never written to me advising me to stop wearing underwear.
Bloody hamster’s still there. OK, the bin men are coming. I am going to throw the hamster in the dustbin. People shouldn’t let their hamsters wonder about willy nilly and if they do they can hardly blame a passing cat for taking advantage of the situation.
I think I’ll leave it a bit longer, I’ve put the hamster in a bag in the hall just in case someone comes to claim the corpse. I’ll put the word about that I have found a dead hamster.
I took Evil out for a walk. I had to go out to buy a new fuse for the washing machine. I hope it’s the fuse otherwise I will have killed yet another domestic appliance.
John says I have that magnetic thing where everything electrical malfunctions when they are near me. He says it’s the reason he malfunctions as well. Since we have lived in this house we have had two washing machines, two dishwashers, two hobs and two fridges. We should have had a new oven too because the fan doesn’t work but we couldn’t be bothered to buy one. We have been here 7 years. It’s not normal, but it may be because we bought Smeg. Ellis told us not to, but we thought they looked nice.
Anyway while I was out I met Ellie’s mum near the Kebab shop. She said she was going to buy some mince to take back to the school where she works. I thought that was strange and said so. ‘No!’ she laughed ‘Mints not mince.’ and walked away giggling. Abigail tells me that according to Ellie’s male friends Ellie’s mum is a MILF. I didn’t know what that meant and when Abigail explained I was quite confused. Is being a MILF a desirable thing ? Are there DILFS ? Or is it just a boy thing ? Are there SILFS or BILFS? I will have to ask Zac. Abigail will tell me not to be so lame.
Zac said ‘Don’t be so lame.’
Hurray the washing machine is working. I changed the fuse on the mains switch and the fuse in the plug and nothing happened so I kicked it and all the lights came on.
I have texted everyone I know about that hamster. Evil took it out of the bag in the hall and I found her licking it hungrily in her basket. It looks a bit the worse for wear now so I think I will put it in the dustbin if no one has claimed it by this afternoon.
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