Today I wanted to go to the Tate. I wanted us all to go to the Tate together, en famille in a lovely, harmonious, artistic way. I knew that this was rather ambitious and that Abigail wouldn’t come home ‘til lunchtime because she would stay the night at Ellie’s after the party and that she would have a hangover. I also knew that Zac would probably want to watch the football or take Evil out but I thought there was a chance I might get there with John and Maisie. I thought it last weekend and the one before but things didn’t pan out.
For the third weekend running the Tate has not been possible.
John says that I’ve been out twice this week so he doesn’t see why I need to go to the Tate. He says that there’s nothing on anyway and that he has a stinking headache actually, quite like a migraine really and that his forehead is quite hot. I say,
‘Take some bloody paracetemol!’ You’ve got a hangover.’
He says,‘That’s a good idea. Where do we keep them?’
Does this man actually live in this house or not? Not! Most decidedly not. He eats the odd meal here and has all his washing done but that’s about it.
I will go to the Tate by myself on Tuesday. Tuesday is a good day because it is the day that Beata comes to clean and I won’t get in her way. Also I feel uneasy about Beata cleaning my house because like me she is too intelligent to spend her days washing other people’s kitchen floors.
Yesterday I sent Zac out with £80 to buy a new pair of Nike hightops because they’re ‘cool’ and because he has played football in the ones he has and they are no longer ‘cool.’ I sent him with Angus from down the road. It’s very difficult for Zac to buy shoes because his feet are so big but I thought they may be able to find something if they really concentrated and didn’t go into Game or Virgin Megastores but it seems they couldn’t avoid it and they came back without any.
Meanwhile John and I took some things to be framed by Steve who frames our things. I took a rather lurid water-colour which my mother had given me at Christmas and John took a front page from the music section he runs in his paper upon which E from Eels had scrawled some witticism in reply to an article John had written about him.
The walls of our house are slowly being covered in the heartfelt thanks of various minor popstars framed tastefully by Steve. I am going to hang the water-colour and forget to hang the page. John doesn’t do DIY so if I don’t hang it, it won’t go on the wall. I have this much power. Although there’s a real possibility that John will pick up one of those Poles who hang around in Wicke’s carpark and get him to do it for a hundred quid and he’ll get a drunk one because he won’t get there early enough to get a sober one and I’ll have to rehang the page anyway.
When we got home Angus’ mother Bella rang to say her children are all too fat and that Fraser said it was her fault for feeding them the wrong food and that her youngest, Morag, was half-witted and would only get a level three in Sats even though she is in year six. And that the computer had frozen and was Angus with us as he’s the only one who could fix it?
I said Angus had gone off with Zac to buy shoes and that she should send Morag to private school and then she wouldn’t know what level his Sats were and it wouldn’t matter. And she said, that they couldn’t because their builder in France had discovered that there was a well under the pigeonier and that it would need underpinning. And that Morag wouldn’t get into a private school anyway.
So I said ‘Come for supper and we can play scrabble.’ Then I drove Abigail round to Ellies with a bottle of fizzy wine and a tray full of exquisitely decorated cupcakes.
Abigail has become the most amazing cook since she stopped eating. As she got out of the car she said ‘Do you like my new jeans? They’re size 25.’
‘Yes.’ I said they’re lovely. I am surprised they make such stylish jeans for children.’
She smiled sweetly and said ‘So my legs don’t look like carrots then? You said my legs looked like carrots in skinny jeans.’
‘Have a lovely time.’ I said slamming the car door and driving off. I did actually say her legs looked like carrots in skinny jeans but that was months ago when she had spent the whole summer eating saffron cake and ice cream in Cornwall and then spent the whole autumn complaining about being fat. I just said ‘Well don’t wear such tight jeans then. They make your legs look like carrots anyway.’ I’m not going to say anything to any of my children ever again.
Fraser and Bella came for supper. We ate Ottolenghi salad We didn’t play scrabble. We talked about music and writing and ski ing and Ottolenghi. They’ve never been to Ottolenghi, imagine! We drank too much wine and talked about drugs and teenagers and their hair styles. Bella said my hair looked very nice and had I had it cut? I said that no actually, back in August I had had it chemically straightened and ever since then it had been randomly snapping off in two inch sections, a process which had left me looking like Ziggy Stardust after he was famous.
‘Well it looks very nice,’ she said. I love Bella and she’s very pretty.
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