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  The deodorant episode prompted a bit of an epiphany, one of those defining moments. If ever a film was made about my life (think Bridesmaids but with more breast-pumping and tiredness), I imagine this would be a pivotal scene, somewhere towards the end, and the actress playing me (first choice: Claire Danes) would whip out a roll-on and glide it up underneath her shirt, boldly raising each arm for optimum pit access and finishing with the chicken-wing waft to aid the drying. Afterwards, she would stare out of the café window with her chin tilted ever so slightly upwards in a confident jut, not one iota of self-consciousness about the strange looks she is getting from people who can’t quite process the unconcealed deodorant application they are witnessing.

  I should make it clear at this point that I don’t make a habit of waiting until I’m sat down in a café before I put my deodorant on. This morning was just one of those rushed affairs when I forgot all about it. With only five hours to crack on with some work in peace, I practically ran up the hill to town. I started to panic that I would end up with wet patches on my T-shirt, so I nipped into Tesco Express for an emergency bottle of roll-on that I hoped would prevent me from smelling like a cheese-and-onion pasty. (I do love a good cheese-and-onion pasty but I’ve always thought they smell like an overweight man’s BO. Is that just me?)

  Without question, in my pre-parent days I would have headed to the safety of a toilet cubicle to apply my deodorant, not wanting to draw unnecessary attention to the fact that I sometimes sweat. This morning, however, I got on with my life. I didn’t select a table in the corner of the café, I didn’t gingerly conceal the deodorant under my coat and I certainly didn’t shoot an apologetic glance to the businessman on the next table who was trying to enjoy his Americano because I, too, had work to do. So I simply got on with it; rolling it on and chicken-wing-wafting it dry in full view of everyone without feeling any level of mortification whatsoever.

  I have commented in the past that the further I get down the parenting line, the fewer fucks I have to give about the opinions of total strangers. Yet this morning, as I sat recalling all those zero-fucks-given incidents from recent years, it occurred to me they have almost always centred around the kids. Typically, they have involved learning not to care when some twat is scorning my toddler’s behaviour from afar, because there is very little I can do when tantrum Armageddon approaches. The lack of concern over the opinion of my fellow café-goers today felt particularly liberating because I was there on my own. Maybe this attitude shift is driven by the fact that I am forever on borrowed time and have to maximise every last morsel of child-free work opportunity during the day to save me from falling asleep on my laptop at midnight once more. This is not sustainable for too many nights in a row – my ear deleted half a chapter of the last book.

  Whatever the reason, I took great comfort from the fact that the Parent Me has started caring much less about what others think of her, even when she is alone and, to the untrained eye, not even necessarily a parent. Just a woman who perfumes her armpits in public places.

  Thursday 7th

  Happy Birthday to me.

  I’m not yet thirty.

  But I feel like I’m ancient

  And I can’t hold my wee.

  I’m twenty-nine today. I honestly can’t believe I’m not yet thirty. I feel at least forty-seven – but I guess that’s what happens when you hit your twenties and reject the whole gap-year/climbing the corporate ladder/basking in the irresponsible glow of fledgling adulthood impulsive red pill in favour of the steady blue pill marked marriage/mortgage/kids/RESPONSIBILITY.

  I have previously commented that, with the benefit of hindsight, I probably would have waited a few more years before ‘settling down’ but, tonight, as I sit here knocking back some birthday fizz, I am feeling quietly satisfied that when Henry turns eighteen and heads off to Cambridge – or maybe Faliraki to ‘get mortal’ with the lads (they are his life choices to make, after all), I will only be forty-two. Young enough to still go and get mortal somewhere myself, in fact. I probably won’t, though. If the child-induced frown lines accrued in my twenties are anything to go by, I will look like a weathered pensioner by then.

  James couldn’t take today off work, so the boys and I went out for lunch with my dad and Tina. Taking small children out for any kind of meal is a precarious business. Sometimes you get it just right, with a well-timed nap, speedy food service and a restaurant with the foresight to provide colouring sheets and crayons. Other times you hit the wall of mealtime despair. There have been several occasions (usually when I have been flying solo with both boys) when I have thrown in the towel mid-meal, leaving the money for the bill, along with a whole heap of uneaten food – mostly on the floor, but one time on the cream linen jacket of the woman behind us. I didn’t raise the spaghetti-sauce-stain alarm, because if she’d got mad with me I might have cried.

  Today, the birthday behaviour gods were on our side. There were no notable tantrum capers, which on the whole made for a pleasant experience, and the adult to child ratio of 3:2 definitely improved our chances. Admittedly, we had to feed an impatient Jude a shedload of snacks before his actual meal arrived and, when he subsequently decided he didn’t want to eat said meal (too full up from the snacks with which we had placated him so he’d wait nicely for his meal: catch-22), we then had to take it in turns to ‘walk him’ around the pub. When I used to hear people say, ‘My child doesn’t sit still for a second!’ I always assumed it was just an expression or an exaggeration. Not so. Jude doesn’t sit still for a second. Unless we’ve set up Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom on our phones or discovered a long-lost sugary offering in the bag, he point-blank refuses to stay in his high chair. In fact, two of his first ever words were ‘Out!’ and ‘Down!’ because he always wants to get out of or down from wherever he is being restrained.

  One of the lesser appreciated benefits of this toddler restlessness (and the need to indulge his partiality for a mosey around whatever eatery we are in) is that he absolutely delights in the chance to wave at everybody – and, in all honesty, I absolutely delight in the opportunity to show him off. Obviously, I would prefer to finish my lunch first, just once in my maternal life, but I enjoy letting him lead me between all the tables as I make apologetic eye contact with strangers – usually much older strangers who look wistfully at his curls and boundless energy and say things like, ‘Oh, dear of him!’, which prompts me to engage in small talk about how old he is and that he ‘keeps me on my toes’.

  He’s now at the stage where he is trying to form the words to join in with the chat, which always leaves me slightly on edge that he will test out the words his brother has been trying to teach him, like ‘stinky’ and ‘bum’. I’m reasonably certain he said, ‘Willy show!’ to a lady in the library the other day, but we all passed it off as ‘Really slow’. I can’t imagine that it would have entered the mind of a respectable library lady that a one-year-old would be saying ‘willy show’ – but my children are not normal, they’re just not. Today, he was on top form and made an old man’s face light up when he smiled and waved at him. Then he stumbled across to a couple who I’d guess were in their sixties, pointed to the car on the man’s T-shirt and proudly declared, ‘Car!’, at which they smiled and told him yes it was a car and wasn’t he clever, before they gestured over to Henry and mentioned something about having grandchildren of a similar age.

  It struck me, as I did a final lap around the tables (and lured Jude back to ours with the promise of ice cream), that one day I will probably find myself having lunch in a pub somewhere and I will glance over at a mum with small children and think, That was me once. It has made me a bit emotional. (I’m generally a bit emotional at the moment, I think it’s the prospect of finding out about Henry’s school place in a couple of weeks – we are fast running out of weekdays together.) It has made me wonder whether I will look back at these years, at my time with the boys before I lost them to school days, and conclude that they were the glory years. I am not fo
olish enough to think that I will look back on these years as always being magical because, if truth be told, some days are a shower of shit. But the best bits, well, they’re days I wish I could bottle up for safe keeping.

  Saturday 9th

  20:00

  We have been gifted the absolute indulgence of a night off from parenting and it’s SO WEIRD. This child-free splendour was originally supposed to be a birthday surprise but, somewhere along the line, Henry got wind of it and, as I was loading the dishwasher a couple of weeks ago, he unexpectedly declared, ‘I can’t wait for my sleepover at Nanny’s when it’s your birthday.’ So that was that.

  Before heading off for an early dinner, James and I had a quick browse around town. This in itself felt alien, like we were cheating by not having to fend off interruptions from the boys about wanting snacks/needing a poo or giving us an ongoing countdown on the number of ‘robot steps’ remaining before their legs gave way. After dinner, I assumed we were heading back to ours, but James steered me in the opposite direction. I guessed at first that we were heading to the cinema, until we arrived at the entrance of a local hotel – a proper posh one at that, not the sort of place we’ve ever been to before, and I felt positively shabby in my mum uniform of jeans, Breton stripe T-shirt and Converse.

  ‘But I haven’t packed anything!’ I jabbered, realising almost immediately that this wasn’t a whim and that, unbeknown to me, James had in fact dropped our bags off earlier in the day – thereby well and truly redeeming the husband points he sacrificed last weekend when he allowed me to think he was dead in the canal. For the next few minutes my thoughts were a mixture of smug How amazing is my husband ones mingled with secret fears about what he definitely would not have considered packing, like moisturiser or dark-circle concealer.

  As I took in the grandeur of our room, James gestured towards the gigantic bed and announced that he ‘didn’t even book it for that’, which prompted us to share a knowing laugh, acknowledging that we’ve actually already had sex this week, and multiple sex sessions in the space of one week are just not how we roll nowadays. We’re more an every second (or third) Sunday funday kind of couple, to keep the engines ticking over. Though every once in a while we go all-out crazy and have an early night on a Tuesday where I don’t even keep my Christmas pyjama T-shirt on (the one with ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ and all the snowflakes on it), and sometimes I even have a preparatory shave down there, which I’m pretty sure counts as spicing things up.

  Tonight’s total relaxation is very much needed and yet, for some messed-up reason, I’m feeling guilty about being here enjoying time away from the kids. What is that about? For months, I have been longing for some time to do nothing – to not have to worry about the kids for just a short while – and yet now I am here I’m struggling to switch off, and what’s worse is that I’m feeling slightly ashamed of myself for wanting to switch off and for taking pleasure in shipping the boys off to Nanny’s for the night. This is a mega relaxation opportunity and in Parentworld those don’t come along very often. The boys will be having an absolute blast at their nanny’s and I just need to give myself a good slap and appreciate this bliss.

  To be honest, I’m most looking forward to the bath. When you have been living in a house without a bath for three years, the sight of a roll-top bath big enough to swim in (without a Minions washcloth staring at you – that’s genuinely what I am faced with in the shower at home) is just about the best present you could have.

  00:16

  For fuck’s sake. So much for the total relaxation. I woke up at midnight with a tummy ache. After thirty seconds of disorientation in the total darkness, I remembered where I was. I then realised, with immediate panic, that my tummy ache felt less like a dodgy curry tummy ache and more like a period ache. If there is one thing James definitely won’t have thought to pack, it’s tampons or pads. He can’t even hear the word ‘pad’ without wincing – though that may be because the first ever pad he saw was the jumbo-length maternity towel I presented him with when I was panicking about the colour of my waters (which were browny-green after Henry took a poo in my womb). I lay in bed for a couple of minutes with a crampy tummy, freaking out about the risk of staining the posh starched Egyptian cotton bedsheets in a Tarantino-style blood spillage. In a flash of inspiration I rummaged around in the dark for my handbag and the rustle of a wrapper told me it would all be all right – for the night, anyway. I silently applauded the Me of Several Weeks Ago who had thought to restock the emergency handbag tampon. She needs to come out to play more often.

  After a quick trip to the bathroom I have climbed back into bed, but I can’t get back to sleep. I’m now lying awake with achy legs and tummy, thinking about the injustice of the fact that on an extremely rare overnighter where we have been alleviated from parental duties I am still unable to sleep soundly because my womb is shouting about not being populated with another child. Perhaps this is my punishment for daring to enjoy some time off.

  Wednesday 13th

  12:10

  I’m heading up to Cambridge for a bookshop event and the boys have just dropped me at the station. As I got out of the car and gave them all a kiss goodbye, I could hear Jude saying, ‘Mummy gone? Mummy gone?’ and I felt The Pang again. It’s an unequally weighted pang at the moment – I pang more for Jude than I do for Henry, because Henry knows the drill. He smiles confidently and relays the information I have told him: that he will see me tomorrow lunchtime, that he’s having a ‘boys’ day with Daddy’. Jude has no such confidence and no idea why I am leaving him or when I will be back. I miss them equally when I am away but it’s Jude I worry about the most at the moment because he still needs me in a way that Henry does not.

  That said, when it comes to bedtime, it’s the chat I have with Henry about everything and nothing that I miss the most. Our chats range from the obscure (‘Mummy, why do we have doors?’) to his heartstring-tugging take on life. A couple of weeks ago I had reprimanded him earlier in the day for asking for food and then wasting it – I’d done the typical parent thing of telling him that there are millions of starving children in the world. When it came to bedtime and we had our usual chat, he said, ‘I’ve got an idea! We could go to Sainsbury’s and buy some food and send it to the children who don’t have any food. We could send them some pesto pasta!’ I wanted to cry over both his naivety and his goodness but I said simply, ‘I’m not sure how well pesto pasta would travel, sweetheart, but we can certainly look into doing something for charity. Would you like that?’

  Yes, he told me, as he lined up his bears under the duvet, he would like that. Of course he would like that. He may drive me up the wall at times (fifty per cent of the time, at least) but I am immensely proud of his take on the world, as if it can be patched up with kindness. I should look into doing something charitable that he can help with. I’ll add it to page 376 of my Things to Do list.

  13:34

  I’m supposed to be using this train journey to answer some emails but I am massively distracted by the woman across from me, who has just got out a startlingly impressive packed lunch. It’s a feast. Avocado-and-something fancy sandwich, some sort of rice dish in a Tupperware container, fruit salad (not a packet one with a tiny fork either, one made fresh at home), oh and wait for it … yep, there’s some kind of nut medley for afters. A fucking nut medley! I’m so in awe of this woman: she clearly has her shit together. I hope she doesn’t have children – wait, that came out wrong – what I mean is, I hope nobody with children is this competent at life. I’m so glad I ate my blueberry muffin and peanut M&Ms back on the platform.

  13:45

  Well. It turns out Mrs Fancy Lunch doesn’t have the right train ticket! I’ve just witnessed a very awkward exchange with the conductor where she tried to explain that she didn’t realise her ticket wasn’t valid for this particular route and he pointed out that it is in fact made clear on her ticket that it’s only valid for routes passing through Taunton. Oh dear. I think somebody spent too much time
preparing her train picnic. I may well have consumed sixty grams of refined sugar in just ten minutes while sitting on the platform but I have at least got on the right train. I’ve now backtracked and decided that neither of us is more competent at life, we just have different priorities.

  22:25

  I had such a lovely evening at the bookshop event. It’s funny how I am losing my nerves about talking in front of people, nerves I thought I would have forever. I think it’s because I know that most of the women who read my book understand where I’m coming from. As always, tonight was a mixture of giggles and some more poignant moments, the latter coming in the form of a mum who came to get her book signed and told me about her battle with PND and PTSD. There was an intense moment of eye contact between us, like she had so much more to say and I really wanted to hear her say it, but she was with two friends and there were people behind her waiting to get their books signed, too, so we didn’t get the chance.

  I’d not been to Cambridge before, and the bookshop is opposite the University’s Trinity College. I know I’ve joked about it in the past, but I honestly couldn’t help having visions of us dropping Henry there on his first day of university. It’s funny: I don’t yet have these future imaginings for Jude. Perhaps it’s because he’s younger or perhaps it’s because Henry will inevitably do everything first. Whatever the reason, there tends to be more pressure on the firstborn, I think, so I’m going to try and alleviate this pressure by keeping these visions to myself.