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HarperCollinsPublishers
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
FIRST EDITION
© Gill Sims 2018
Cover photograph © Tom Gauld 2018
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Gill Sims asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008298784
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008298791
Version: 2019-03-01
DEDICATION
To AE and AT
A NOTE TO THE READER
This US edition has been lightly Americanised for your reading pleasure. We have kept certain British words and slang intact but made some changes for clarity. And Mummy insisted on being Mummy throughout the book, although she kindly let us change the title.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
A NOTE TO THE READER
JULY
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER
JANUARY
FEBRUARY
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
JUNE
JULY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
About the Publisher
JULY
Monday, 18 July
I have one week till the summer vacation begins. I can’t help but feel awfully jealous of the Famous Five’s parents – not only did Julian, Dick and Anne’s mama and papa simply bung them off on Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin at the slightest excuse, but Aunt Fanny was always sending them off to islands and moors and coves FULL OF CRIMINALS AND WRECKERS AND SMUGGLERS so that Uncle Quentin could work in peace at his inventing. I have frequently wondered if I could do similar, as I did once invent a very fabulous app that made splendid amounts of money for a little while, even if the app world is fickle and today’s hit is forgotten tomorrow and no one buys it anymore. I’m sure I could probably do the same again if only I could just send the children to live outdoors and go feral for the summer (and stop faffing about and eating cookies). As I recall, Uncle Quentin’s inventions never even made any money, which was why he and Aunt Fanny were poor and had to look after the beastly cousins, which makes it doubly unfair that it is now so frowned upon to hand your children a bicycle and a packet of sandwiches on the first day of the vacation, and tell them not to come home till it’s time to go back to school. Jane is eleven now, you see, and more than of an age for Famous Fiving. I did once wistfully suggest this to her, when we were in the middle of one of our frequent rows about why she is not allowed an Instagram account yet, and she pointed out the many illegalities with this plan and threatened to call ChildHelp if I ever broached it again.
I am feeling particularly bitter about the expenditure the summer vacation necessitates, because I have been reading the Famous Five books with Peter, though somewhat against his will, as he informs me each night that he would much rather play online games than endure another chapter of marvellous Blyton-y japes, frolics and foiling of beastly common-criminal types. Jane has obviously point-blank refused to take part in any such babyish activity as being read to in the evening, and so we compromised with her promising to read something herself instead, which I felt was a perfectly reasonable offer, until after two chapters she announced that Anne of Green Gables was stupid and boring and why was Anne always wittering on about imagination and I shouted that Jane had no soul and was clearly a changeling as no child of mine would speak thus of Anne Shirley. Now I pretend not to know that she is watching YouTube make-up tutorials instead of wandering the enchanted lanes of Avonlea with Gilbert Blythe (who I still totally would, incidentally).
Peter, however, has not quite succeeded in breaking my spirit to the same extent as Jane, and so I am still forcing him to sit with me and roam Kirrin Island. I think he is going for a chemical-warfare option to get out of our reading sessions, though, as I swear he farts far more when he is supposed to be sitting and reading with me than he does normally, and that is saying something for a child who once proudly announced he had made his teacher feel sick with his flatulence. The chapter has had to be cut short once or twice due to my eyes watering.
In theory, this summer should be less fraught for me than previous ones, due to my possibly dubious decision to take voluntary layoff three months ago. I’d had grand plans to become a top games and app designer, on the strength of creating an app, which I called Why Mummy Drinks, two years ago. Taking the layoff seemed like a brilliant opportunity to have a bit of a financial cushion until I came up with the latest hit game. When I quit the old job, I had a plethora of brilliant ideas that I was quite sure I only needed time to make into something splendidly lucrative. But when I actually try to translate them into a game or an app, they’re just a bit … well, shit. Also, the fact that I am really, really useless at working from home and managing my time properly might have something to do with my lack of productivity, and after years of dreaming about escaping from the office it’s actually quite lonely working at home by yourself with no one to talk to. I even find myself missing Jean from Shipping, who used to tell long and involved stories about the state of her gall bladder. Also, when you are at home all day by yourself, you eat a startling quantity of chocolate cookies. So not only am I failing to achieve Great Things, and feeling lonely, I have gained a stone and am now alarmed by the size of my own arse every time I accidently catch sight of it in a mirror. I feel like one of those cardboard children’s books That’s Not My Arse, It’s Far Too Enormous …
Anyway, with the summer looming, I have been booking sports camps and daycare slots, and making complex deals with friends so that we can all have some semblance of having our children looked after during the vacation AND be able to try to get some work done without spending vast sums of money. Obviously we will all end up spending vast sums of money anyway, as the children will require entertaining for the summer, as well as being fed at alarmingly close intervals, leaving me wondering how they cope when they are at school and can’t constantly squawk for food, like starving baby starlings, beaks agape, begging for snacks.
Friday, 22 July
And they are done for the summer! All week the children have come tottering out of school, buckling under piles of tattered composition books and dog-eared artwork, all of which is liberally sprinkled with glitter, now gently dusted over my house, and all of which apparently must be kept for posterity, because according to Jane, ‘When I’m a famous social media influencer, Mummy, this could all be worth a fortune!’ I am struggling to see how Jane’s indifferent copy of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, which looks identical to every other child’s in her class, is someday going to be of any value to anyone but me, but it seems that I will be trampling their dreams and casting their childhood aside if I throw any of it away. Obviously, I am discreetly removing several pieces every night and chucking them in the outside trash, while lovingly claiming that everything is carefully stored in the attic.
Peter has also brought home his vacation homework – a small plant that must be kept alive during the vacation, and indeed nurtured over the coming year. Marvellous. I have a poor track record with plants. Even cacti shrivel and die at the touch of my black thumbs. I asked Peter if he knew what sort of plant it was, so I could purchase an emergency replacement if need be. Peter helpfully replied, ‘A green plant, Mummy.’ I’m not sure how much help that will be as I scour the garden centres of the land with a desiccated twig for reference. Perhaps it’s my come-uppance for letting the class hamster make a break for freedom when I was allowed it home for the weekend when I was nine, and forcing my mother to tour every pet shop in town until she found a suitable replacement, as Hannibal was never seen again. Mum swore she could hear him scampering around at night for years afterwards, but I think that was only to stop me crying after I discovered Alphonso, her vicious Siamese cat, licking what looked like hamster fur off his chops and looking more pleased with himself than ever.
Monday, 25 July
The first day of the vacation. I suppose it could’ve been worse. I had a book called The First Day of the Holidays when I was little, about delinquent penguins who stole a motorbike and went joyriding and crashed it (no idea why penguins were stealing motorbikes), and there were at least no auto thefts or joyriding animals today. What there was, was a lot of moaning.
I had taken today off, thinking it would be nice for the children for us all to do something together on the first day. Jane demanded the movie theatre, Peter demanded Laser Quest, I declined both, insisting we were going to do something wholesome and fun. I had the children’s best friends Sophie and Toby for the day too, as part of the complex childcare arrangements with my friend Sam (as a single father, Sam’s childcare issues are possibly the most complicated of all my friends), and I brightly announced that perhaps it might be a lovely idea to go to a stately home and learn about some history.
‘Booooorrrrring!’ moaned my children, while Sophie and Toby clearly thought the same but at least were well enough brought up not to say so.
‘Why do we have to do this? This is so crap,’ huffed Jane.
‘Mummy, can we take our iPads?’ whimpered Peter.
‘IT WILL BE FUN!’ I bellowed. ‘IT WILL BE INTERESTING AND EDUCATIONAL AND THE STUFF THAT HAPPY MEMORIES ARE MADE OF! And also it will go some way to me getting my money’s worth from my very middle-class National Trust membership that your father keeps moaning on that I don’t use enough.’
Of course, as soon as we got there I remembered why I don’t use the flipping National Trust membership – because National Trust properties are full of very precious and breakable items, and very precious and breakable items don’t really mix with children, especially not small boys. Where I had envisaged childish faces glowing with wonder as they took in the treasures of our nation’s illustrious past, we instead had me shouting, ‘Don’t touch, DON’T TOUCH! FFS, DON’T TOUCH! I SAID DON’T TOUCH, DON’T CROSS THAT ROPE, DON’T SIT ON THAT, OH, JESUS CHRIST, OH, FML,’ while stoutly shod retirees tutted disapprovingly and drafted angry letters to the Daily Mail in their heads. Maybe I could design an app that you put on children’s phones or iPods that can detect when they are in the vicinity of something expensive and breakable so it starts vibrating and sounds an alarm and squawks, ‘DON’T TOUCH THAT!’ to save parents the trouble. It would be useful in many situations, not just in National Trust houses – the china department of a big store, for example. Though if you are foolish enough to take children into a china department, then you probably deserve the inevitable carnage that will be left in your wake …
Because the children had managed to eat the lovingly packed picnic on the way there, as they were obviously ‘starving’ within three minutes of us leaving the house, I was forced to take them to the café for lunch. A self-service café with four children in tow is not an experience to be recommended. In theory, at eleven and nine the children should have been relatively self-sufficient, but in practice, complex tasks like standing in a line, holding a tray or choosing what flavour of juice they wanted proved quite beyond them, so that by the time we sat down I think the entire county hated us. The pasta bake Jane had maintained she had to have and would definitely eat was immediately declared inedible, as she thought she saw a bit of red bell pepper and I knew she didn’t like red bell pepper; Sophie burnt her mouth on her soup, despite me telling her to wait for it to cool down; Peter and Toby inhaled the contents of the children’s lunchboxes that they had insisted they wanted in one mouthful and looked around expectantly for more, while I poured cold water down Sophie and scraped the mayonnaise off my sandwich for Jane and hissed, ‘No, no one is having Coke,’ promised potato chips when we got home and resisted the urge to simply walk out of the café and bang my head repeatedly against the picturesque brick wall outside. Though I would probably have been told off for damaging National Trust property.
I provoked further shocked looks when I rallied the children to go by shouting, ‘Right, come on then, you monstrous hell fiends.’ I am still not sure whether the shock was due to me referring to the precious moppets as monstrous hell fiends, or the fact that they responded to the name.
How many more days of the vacation are there?
AUGUST
Thursday, 4 August
The children have been at Sports Camp this week. Sports Camps are a very good idea thought up by some sadistic bastard somewhere under the guise of providing fun for children and affordable daycare for parents in the vacation. If your idea of ‘affordable’ is approximately eleventy fucking billion pounds. And your idea of ‘fun’ is providing five different changes of clothes a day for all the different activities, including swimwear that has to be rescued from their bags each night and washed and dried or else they will just leave it there to moulder and keep stuffing clean towels on top, because they are rancid beasts.
Every time I sign the children up to something like this I have secret hopes that they will discover their hidden talent and turn out to be a tennis/soccer/gymnastics virtuoso. So far this has not happened, as they seem to spend most of their time eating potato chips before pleading for money for the vending machines afterwards, so that my darling poppets, who in theory should be worn out by a day of vigorous activity, are instead smacked off their tits on the energy drinks that they bought even as I howled, ‘Just get Cheetos, sweetie, nothing else, I said Cheetos, no, don’t open that can, DON’T OPEN THAT. Oh FML!’
Simon is in Madrid, doing whatever it is he does on his important business trips, which I suspect are not nearly as much hard work as he claims, given he gets to stay in a nice hotel (how I appreciated his text informing me he had been upgraded to a suite) and go out for nice dinners in actual restaurants, some of which don’t even serve fries, and where he doesn’t have to issue strict instructions to the staff about how there must be no sauce whatsoever allowed anywhere in the vicinity of the children’s food because obviously terrible things will happen if their burgers are contaminated with anything as awful as mayonnaise or relish, although they will immediately douse them in a vat of ketchup, so they wouldn’t taste the offending sauces anyway. I dream of hotels. I never got to go on fancy trips in the old job, but I had some vague idea that my new career as an app designer might involve me getting to go to conferences and possibly even conventions. Las Vegas seems to have a lot of those sorts of things, and I had visions of myself sending casual texts to Simon from there about what a good time I was having, probably in an upgraded suite, eating food with sauce. Instead, it is just me. And the cookies. Staring hopelessly at a blank screen and wondering what the fuck I am going to do, and trying not to think about how almost all the layoff money has now gone. A lot of it spent on cookies.
I had, obviously, planned that the children being at Sports Camp would be an excellent chance to get some work done, but it hasn’t really worked out. Does anyone actually ever get any work done when they are working from home, or is it just me? I mostly just stared out the window, and perused the Daily Mail website to see who is ‘stepping out’ (going to the shops), ‘flaunting their curves’ (also going to the shops, but in a slightly tighter top than just ‘stepping out’) or ‘slamming’ a fellow Z-lister in a ‘feud’ (putting something vague and attention-seeking on Twitter before deleting it an hour later when the Daily Mail has taken notice). I also played a lot of solitaire before sending a flurry of emails at 2.45 p.m., just before I had to leave to go and pick the children up. Foolishly, one of the emails I sent was to Simon, ever the supportive and beloved husband, who replied to my email questioning the lack of work I had achieved today by saying that yes, it is just me, and he does not procrastinate ever. This is a massive lie, as I have seen his version of working from home, and it involves just as much Daily Mail as mine, and also a lot of browsing Autocar looking at sports cars he can’t afford, then staring pathetically into cupboards FULL OF FOOD (apart from cookies, because I’ve eaten them all), feebly enquiring why there is never anything to eat in this house.
I think it is safe to say that my virtuous resolution not to drink on week nights is not going well.
Aunt Fanny never had these problems.
After two glasses of wine, and an unpleasant foray into online banking that confirmed my fears about the state of my account, and no adult interaction all day apart from the perky ‘coach’ at the Sports Camp getting me to sign the accident book again, due to Peter’s decision to headbutt the floor for reasons known only to him, I decided that something needed to change, and I signed up for a recruitment agency. Maybe just a little part-time job, to make some money, but that leaves me with plenty of time to come up with my brilliant app idea. And that also will involve lovely business trips to exotic places (there wasn’t actually an option for that, but there really should be).
Friday, 5 August
Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I fear I have done a foolish thing. I am at Scout Camp with Jane. I signed up as a parent volunteer at a meeting about the camp a couple of months ago, feeling it was a good and worthy thing to do that would give me a chance to spend some time with Jane like a nice caring mummy, and also – on some level – I would be proving my old Brown Owl wrong for drumming me out of the Girl Scouts for insubordination. (I can’t even remember what I did. I have a vague recollection of objecting to excessive knot-tying and messing around while singing ‘Ging Gang Goolie’, but whatever it was, apparently I was Not the Right Sort). But Scout Camp! Scout Camp would make up for it all. A verdant green field, with stout white canvas tents and smoky camp fires to make cocoa on. We would probably get the milk for the cocoa from a local farmer. There may even be ruffianly sorts lurking, just waiting for me to rally the girls and solve a mystery. Oh, yes! I was going to be marvellous at Scout Camp! I eagerly thrust my hand in the air, practically bursting with enthusiasm, when Melanie the Scout Leader asked for volunteers. Too late, I realised I needn’t have been quite so keen, as every other parent had breathed a sigh of relief once they saw that some other poor fool was willing to do it and get them off the hook. Melanie, meanwhile, did not look entirely entranced at my selfless gesture.
‘Ellen!’ she said weakly. ‘How kind of you! Err, are you sure this is your sort of thing?’
I assured Melanie that of course it was my sort of thing.
‘Only, you know, you’ll be in charge of some of the girls. By yourself. Are you quite sure you would be able to cope with that?’ said Melanie anxiously.
I feared Melanie was thinking back to the unfortunate evening a few weeks ago when I had been the parent on duty at Scouts and she had been called away to deal with a nosebleed. A nice policeman had come along that evening to give a talk about self-defence, and Melanie had thought it quite safe to leave the rest of the girls in the care of PC Briggs and myself. It was most unfortunate that PC Briggs was quite a young and naïve police officer. It was equally unfortunate that Amelia Watkins had chosen the moment when Melanie was out of the room to ask to see PC Briggs’s handcuffs, claiming she was considering a career in the police force. No sooner had the poor young chap handed them over for Amelia’s inspection, than she swiftly handcuffed him to a chair, and the rest of the girls, sensing weakness as only the under-twelves can, descended mob-handed and relieved him of his baton and walkie-talkie too, before going full-on Lord of the Flies. They danced around him, mocking his pleas to be released, while Tabitha MacKenzie radioed menacing ransom messages back to base and Tilly Everett tried to break Milly Johnson’s arm with the baton and I made ineffectual pleas for them all to settle down.
This all happened within the three minutes that Melanie was absent from the hall. By the time she returned, PC Briggs was on the verge of tears, his radio was crackling ominously with threats of ‘back-up’ being dispatched and Milly had Tilly in a headlock trying to disarm her (Milly at least had been paying attention in the self-defence demonstration).
One shrill blast of Melanie’s whistle restored order, PC Briggs departed hastily, his radio now crackling with hysterical laughter about Girl Scouts, and I was sent to sort out the boxes of felt-tip pens, being deemed too irresponsible to even be allowed near the PVA glue.
Nonetheless, as no other parent was now willing to come forth, since a Volunteer had been found, Melanie was stuck with me.
‘Do you know much about camping, Ellen?’ she enquired, without much hope for my answer.
‘Oh, yes!’ I informed her brightly. ‘I went to Glastonbury Festival once. It was marvellous. I’m sure Scout Camp will be much the same. It’ll be fun!’ I assured her. Melanie looked unconvinced.
And now here I am. In a field. Quite a muddy field. There are many, many Girl Scouts here, for apparently it is a County Camp, and they have come from far and wide and Melanie wishes to make a good impression. I fear Melanie had not factored in my bright pink Hunter wellies when she was planning her Good Impression. I also fear that she may be slightly judging my jaunty ensemble of denim shorts and a Barbour, which was not dissimilar to my Glastonbury outfit twenty years earlier when I was hoping to channel Kate Moss, but too late I realised that in fact Kate Moss is the only woman in Britain over the age of twenty-five who can successfully pull off wearing shorts and I looked not so much festival chic as a scarecrow on acid chic. On the plus side, the fake tan I applied to my legs has gone such a lurid shade of orange that they probably glow in the dark, so I will be easy to find if I get lost in the field at night.