I woke up covered in blood this morning.
John said that it was like waking up in the middle of a slasher movie and wasn’t there some way that I could manage the whole thing a bit better? He said that he couldn’t really understand how someone could have the same thing happening to them at about the same time every month for thirty years and still be taken completely by surprise every time.
I said, ‘I am not taken by surprise, it’s just that they don’t make Pampers for adults and Allways Alldays Ultra Super Duper With Wings and Tampax Plus Plus don’t seem to work any more and could I have a bit of sympathy as I am obviously bleeding to death?’
After that I went to have a bath but I had to keep letting the water out and refilling it because sitting in blood-red water isn’t aesthetic and I was afraid Maisie would come into the bathroom to clean her teeth with the special Pearl Drop toothpaste Father Christmas gave her in her stocking and be frightened. After the third refill the water went cold and I had to get out.
Apparently today is officially the most depressing day of the year, which isn’t very nice if it’s your birthday or something, but quite good if you die, and everyone is really miserable for ever after on the anniversary of your death.
I looked out the window and saw grey sky above grey naked trees, lining a grey road peopled by scuttling grey-faced neighbours and felt quite ill. I have a lot to do today but will have to do it later due to the blood and an all pervading of gloom.
In February I will have been writing my book for 5 years. John will be 50 Abigail will be 18 and I will still be 44 and my book will not be finished.
I have left all those characters just hanging there in mid-doings since late November so that I could manage Christmas.
I should have a three book deal by now and The Orange Prize For Fiction should be on my wall or mantelpiece or wherever is most appropriate. I could take down one of John’s ‘ Thankyou-From-A-Popstar ’ pictures and put my Orange Prize on the same hook, so there would be no need for drilling, hammering or searching for wall studs or going all the way to Ikea to buy those special little hanging things that go into plasterboard without causing cracks or huge chunks of wall to fall out. I wonder if The Orange Prize For Fiction is actually orange. If it is, I’m not sure that it will go with our decor, I suppose if I get a three book deal we could afford to redecorate.
I got a letter from Zac’s school today to say that we haven’t paid his school fees. We send our two older children to private schools because when I was young, I was set fire to at my comprehensive school and have been highly suspicious of them ever since.
John said I could send the children to school wherever I wanted. I think that sort of laissez-faire attitude comes with a lovely, cosy, private school education. John must have memories of long winter evenings before an open fire in the housemaster’s study, eating Gentleman’s Relish on toast. with the odd light discussion about Great Expectations thrown in for good measure. He must remember larking about with his chums in the school grounds, after prep in the summer. No wonder he’s so able and confident. After he’s had a few drinks, he mutters darkly about cold showers and unjustified beatings but frankly I don’t believe him, he’s just trying to make himself sound interesting.
Anyway it seems that my cheque to the school’s bankers has gone astray, so I spoke to the Bursar at Zac’s school who was very nice and then I phoned our bank to cancel the cheque and got chatting to the girl on the other end of the phone and she said, What do you do?
And I said, ‘I am writing a book.’
And she said, ‘How exciting! Do you get paid for that?
I said ‘No’.
So she said ‘Oh, you’re a homemaker’.
And I said, ‘Yes,’ but I don’t think I am... really.
Basically she was just establishing that I didn’t have to pay tax on our savings account as it is in my sole name. I felt a bit depressed after that.
Then I forgot to cancel the cheque. I will have to ring back later. It’s quite interesting that all that money is in my name. I could run away and never be seen again. I hear Panama’s nice.
20th/21st January 2008. 4 am. Insomnia.
Awake. This is such a pain because I will be too tired to go to the Tate tomorrow.
I didn’t take a sleeping pill last night because I’ve only got three left and I thought I had better wean myself off them but all that’s happened is that I been lying in bed with my eyes screwed shut worrying about stuff for hours and hours.
Just before I turned the light off I checked my e-mails only to find that the ‘fatal and catastrophically incontrovertible error’ effecting my parents Mailer Daemon had ‘conclusively disassociated itself’ or something and that all pending mail had, in fact, been sent after all.
Clicking on my Inbox several times and re-logging in four or five, I found that both parents had e-mailed saying that although my mother had taken to her bed upon receiving my e-mail they had, nonetheless, had a jolly good Christmas and that they were both very proud of me and my curtain fabric and sorry for not mentioning it before. That’s good then.
The other reason I couldn’t sleep was because I have a shocking headache. I have just taken two paracetemol, two aspirins and two neurofen to make absolutely sure all my multitudinous pain pathways are blocked. It takes twenty minutes for pills to work so here’s hoping.
Also Bella phoned just before we went to bed to say that the journalist down the road who works on a proper paper had been burgled last night.
They came in through the back while everyone was sleeping and stole all their passports, laptops and gold. Bella said we should be extra vigilant. I really must get a baseball bat. Apparently it’s illegal to wave a baseball bat about unless you are in the vicinity of a baseball ball, but I expect they come in sets.
Evil would go mad if a burglar broke in through the back. She would roll over, lie down and sit and she may even accidentally trip them up.
Abigail texted me at about 11 to say she was staying at Ellie’s because she felt ill and could I ring her school tomorrow to say she wouldn’t be in? ‘Yes darling’ I texted back ‘sleep well. ’ Then Ellie’s mother phoned to say had Abigail texted me to say the girls were going out to a night club with Brian and was that OK?
I phoned Abigail on Ellie’s mobile because she wasn’t picking hers up and Abigail said she did really feel ill but she was going to a night club in Tottenham Court Road.
John reckons we have lost control of Abigail.
I think I’ll go and stand on the roof terrace and see if I can spot any burglars. You can always tell burglars because rather than switching on the lights when they enter a house at night like a normal person they use torches. It’s a bit of a give away really but useful for vigilant neighbours like me.
There’s a full moon but I didn’t see any. God it’s cold out there. Ooh I think I can hear a spooky creeping noise downstairs.....I’m probably imagining it, perhaps I should get back into bed. My mouth feels really dry...and sort of foamy. We haven’t got anything worth taking down there anyway apart from a lot of Nintendo Gameboy Wii Cubes and slaughter games in the playroom and I would be quite pleased if they were stolen. We could use the insurance money to buy a potter’s wheel and a wood working bench and Zac could learn a whole new way of being. I am definitely going back to bed now, I think the creeping noise is Buddy.
I have just checked the packet for the side effects of my sleeping pills. There’s a huge list: headaches, cramps, dizziness, vomiting, shooting pains, paranoia, hallucinations, dry mouth, foaming mouth, imaginary friends, terrorists and, in the event of stopping too suddenly, sleeplessness. I wish I’d known all that before.
I’m going to take a sleeping pill.
January 21st
Book Group
I feel terrible. Maise got in bed with us at 5.30 because she had a bad dream. I had a bad dream that I was at a funeral at my grandmother’s house and that I was trying to hide a rat in her airing cupboard. It was a very bad dream, much worse than Maisie’s, I am sure. I drove Zac to the bus stop at seven thirty with my eyes closed.
When I came back John was still sleeping, he is so lucky. He took Maisie to school because I fell asleep on the bed with my boots on. He’s meeting Amy Winehouse’s PR for lunch today in the Charlotte Street Hotel. That should be interesting, John thinks the PR might cancel.
I had a dream while I was asleep with my boots on that I was Amy Winehouse and that my legs were hurting because my bones were sticking sharply into the mattress and that my hair was in an uncontrollable beehive. Then I woke up. I must stop reading The Sun.
I have to read Rebecca for book group. It’s book group tomorrow evening and I haven’t read Rebecca. I could speed read it, if I knew how, or I could just try and remember it, I read it when I was fourteen, that’s not that long ago, it’s short term memory that goes as you get older so if I concentrate I should be able to remember all the pertinent details. I can’t not go to book group because I didn’t go last time because I went to the premier of ‘I am Legend’ with Ellis. Ellis has a crush on Will Smith. Tomorrow I could go to a premier as well for Jack Nicholson’s new film, but book group is very important to me because I don’t often get the chance to be intellectual. Also Ellis and I agree that Jack Nicholson is not as attractive as Will Smith.
I can’t remember a thing about Rebecca perhaps my long term memory is going too. Ok I’m going to go and read it now.
It’s a very fat book.
It’s got quite a nice picture on the front, a woman sort of lolling about on a sofa.. I’d like top loll about on the sofa.
I can’t read it, I have to put all these socks away.
Ok I’ve read it, it’s very good, a sort of 1930s Jane Eyre with a dead, mad wife instead of a live one. Excellent. I haven’t finished it but if I’m careful no one will notice and the book group will know I am serious about book group.
I picked Maisie up from school. Where did that whole day go?
I took Maise to piano and then brought her back from piano to have her tutor and then my friend, Rachel, came over to talk about secondary school transfer. Said she was at her wits end because Civic is a horrible school full of strange girls who turned into very stressed lawyers with dysfunctional lives when they grew up and that Daisy just couldn’t go there. She has started taking Daisy to church so she could get into Edgeware, but I wasn’t to tell anyone, especially not Ellis because he would hate her.
She also said that at Daisy’s school the head had decided that because of health and safety all children have to wear hard hats and high visibility jackets outside and that they were not allowed to run in
the playground.
Maisie handed me a school newsletter saying that snow was very dangerous and that if it did snow this winter her school would be closed. I showed Rachel the letter and she cheered up a bit.
January 22nd
Book Group.
I went to book group. We didn’t talk about the book.
January 25th
Dishwasher
FHM
I was just washing everything up this morning, having taken it all out of the dishwasher which hadn’t bothered to wash anything. How can it call itself a dishwasher and not actually wash dishes? I understand that this is pretty much standard behaviour amongst dishwashers. It hadn’t even attempted the cutlery. It’s as if I went around calling myself a wife and mother without being married or having any children.
Anyway I was washing it all up listening to Radio 4. I think I was listening to You and Yours, which ought really to be called Them and Theirs because I’ve never heard them mention anything that has anything to do with me, when I became incredibly irritated.
Why has that woman got such a bizarre accent? All through the programme she kept going on about ‘foonding’ and ‘boodgets’ and ‘pooblic mooney’.
I think she’s doing it on purpose like those people who speak quite normally and then out of the blue they say ‘Newcassle.’ I think she’s doing it so that anyone listening will know she’s gritty and from the North and I think that Radio 4 have not told her not to do it because they like having gritty Northerners on their programmes, as it’s more inclusive and some miners or clog dancers might tune in. So I turned her off.
Last night we went to Zac’s parents evening. All his GCSEs are predicted to be A* but all his mock GCSEs are Cs and Ds.
Zac didn’t do any revision over the Christmas holidays and the physics teacher said that she thought he seemed tired. I said I would frisk him before he went to bed each night, to make sure he didn’t have a phone, Gameboy, ipod or similar concealed about his person. And she said he could probably hide one in his hair like Amy Winehouse’s drugs. And I said perhaps that was why he refuses to cut it. John looked around the hall at the boys who were attending with their parents and said there seemed to be a fashion for sporting big hair amongst his year group. Abigail calls Zac’s hair a Jewfro.
After the parents evening John and I went out for supper. We had Dim Sum When we were walking back down our road we saw Fraser who asked us in for a glass of wine. They are going to France today for Burns Night. They are taking turnips and a small Scottish actor who was falling asleep on their sofa. Bella and Fraser are Scottish actors too.
Fraser and John started talking about quantum physics. John, because E from Eels’ dad was a quantum physicist and Fraser because he read a lot about it whilst hanging about on film sets. The new Bond film is going to be called Quantum of Solace which means I won’t understand what’s going on.
Zac’s school rang up today to say that he wasn’t there which is strange because I dropped him off at 8 this morning and I saw him go in. So I rang him on his mobile and he said he was there Then the school rang again to say he wasn’t, so I said he should go and stand in the school office and because he’s so big they would probably agree he was there. He did that and the school agreed.
Maisie didn’t go to school today. She hardly ever goes for a whole five days in a row because her duvet falls off in the middle of the night and anyway wouldn’t I rather she stayed at home where she would be safe and warm rather than making her suffer?
This morning I came back from taking Zac to school and found her pallidly reading a book in bed with blue hoops under her eyes. Her hair hung limply, a hectic pink flush had spread across her cheeks and she said she had a sore throat like a knife and could barely speak so she wouldn’t be able to answer any questions at school. John was still asleep.
‘Oh my darling little thing.’ I said lovingly ‘You absolutely cannot go to school.’ Maisie flopped back on her pillow, wanly.
Later, she put on a gorgeous outfit of mini skirt, glittery top and Ugg boots, brushed her golden hair still sparks flew out of it and came floating downstairs in a cloud of my Besier Du Dragon.
‘I’m bored, she said can I make a smoothie?’
I hate children.
Tomorrow Abigail is 18 and we are going to Nobu. I said we could only go to Nobu if she eats something but cleverly she is a vegetarian and Nobu is a sushi restaurant so I think I have been outflanked again. After Nobu she is going to the birthday party of some girl from Kings who she doesn’t know.
John and I asked if we could be given some consideration and be involved in her celebrations which are, in some degree, our celebrations too, which is why she suggested Nobu and she has magnanimously invited some school friends round for champagne at 6 as long as we promise to keep out the way and not to be embarrassing.
I am going to be very embarrassing. I think I’ll say how nang it all is that John and I are able to hang with the kids, how antwacky some people’s rents are and how I hope they have a grimy timey at the girl-whirley from Kings’ party.
I just went upstairs to Zac’s room to get his dirty washing and found a stack of FHM magazines under his bed. I don’t know what the etiquette of confiscating your teenage son’s magazine stash is. I am sure they must be keeping him up at night.
Do I remove them and say nothing, remove them and say I recycled them, remove them one at a time without mentioning it, or leave them there because at least they’re not Playboy or Readers Wives. I could ask Abigail but she’d just say ‘Don’t be rank.’ and how typical of Zac to read FHM when everyone knows it’s ‘So rinsed.’
Oh no, Abigail has just told me her friends from school are the super rich from West London. I said ‘Shall we pretend we own the house next door as well? Shall we have cocktails? Do they want a taxi?’ Is our kitchen posh enough or shall we redecorate?’
She said ‘Don’t be so lame.’
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