December is already a bit of a blur in my mind. These are some of the things that happened on 12 of its days, daze, and Harry Styles, I can only apologise:
Day 1) I go for a festive pizza with my friend Hanna, and let my five-year-old draw on our arms so we can keep talking to each other. We’re so deep in conversation that I don’t notice what the kid is tattooing onto me with her pen: a series of anuses with blobs of shit coming out of them. It’s like living with Gilbert and George. More and more arseholes and poo appear on my skin as she screams with delight. The pizza is alright though.
Day 2 ) The Christmas show at school - I compare notes with other parents afterwards. Basically, if your kid was allowed onto the front of stage and you could see them, you think it was a heartwarming production full of spirit and ahh so lovely, something in your eye. If, like me, your kid was stuck at the back and you couldn't see them, you think it was a load of shite.
Day 3 ) I decide that I have been a scrooge and so go to the second performance of the school show. It's much better this time around - one kid falls right off the stage.
Day 4) I tell the Christmas tree man that it absolutely can’t be a wonky, falling-over one again this year. He insists he has found me a very straight one. He lies. I get it home and spend hours shaving away at the trunk with a Swiss Army knife to try and balance it out. “Shave, Mummy, shave!” the child cheers at me, because she knows that when I start swearing like this it is important to encourage me. To ease my soul we then play the Piss Off Game, in which we gather a bunch of teddy bears together and they all scream PISS OFF at each other until my daughter and I are crying with hysterical laughter, through which I issue my regular, slightly desperate reminder that YOU CAN’T PLAY THIS AT SCHOOL OR THEY WILL TAKE ME AWAY. I really shouldn’t be writing this on the internet.
Day 5) The Christmas tree is now upright, but it’s absolutely massive and we can’t see the telly. Oh well. It’s not like people really watch much telly at this time of year eh. Ah.
Day 6) We decorate the Christmas tree. Look I never claimed to be fast. Everything is wonderful, apart from not being able to see the telly.
Day 7) Having got into the spirit of decorating, my daughter decorates the two baking potatoes that I was going to cook for dinner. We can’t eat them because they have been made sacred by a blue Sharpie. They have faces. They start talking to us. I make them a nice little sacred perch where they can observe the Christmas tree. They soon start to smell rancid.
Day 8) The sacred Christmas potatoes have turned out to possess the evil eye, because under their watchful gaze, the tree topples right over. “Oh god, I’d better get it upright again,” I say, very anxiously. “No don’t! We can see the telly now,” says the child, which is very cheering. It’s great - we now have a fully decorated tree, horizontal across the floor, AND we can watch Strictly. A few days later, someone I’ve never met before comes round. As I lead our visitor into the living room I go “OH GOD THE TREE HAS FALLEN OVER” as if it’s just happened. She just stares.
Day 9) The kid is learning to write so she makes me a card that says “MERE CRIMS” on it, which means Merry Christmas, if you’re texting someone on a Nokia brick from 1998 that charges per letter. She also writes a letter to Santa in which she asks for a CD player. I feel quite sad for this kid that she will never get to experience the 1990s. She'd have liked it there.
Day 10) Child's first ever sleepover at a friend’s house. In their bathroom I notice there are scales. I’ve been doing a lot of fitness workouts lately (yes it’s a shock to me too) so I think, ooh, scales, let’s see how much weight I’ve lost. One child jumps on them first - they say 16kg. Another kid jumps on them - the display now reads 21kg. I take my turn, and the scales simply say FAT. I’m not joking - there are no numbers, only the word FAT appears, and then a little red loveheart appears next to the word FAT, as if the machine thinks it’s kinda cute how fat I am. I am screaming. Why are the scales doing this to me? It turns out that these are some hi-tech heat-sensitive scales bought by the dad, and they they can do clever things calculating your BMI etc, and that the word FAT should have been accompanied by calculations and data or something. But they malfunctioned, because of the three of us jumping on them.
I will not be weighing myself again this year.
I say goodnight to my daughter and walk round to my friend Jack’s Christmas party, which is always the most star-studded event of the year, because he knows everyone. Florence Welch sings, Alexa Chung DJs, and everyone gets very drunk and smokes in the kitchen. (It is lovely. They are all lovely. I’m not sure why they let me in tbh.) At one point I find myself a bit pissed and standing under some mistletoe with a cheery Harry Styles in front of me, so I say “Hello!” and go to embrace him. Harry, not knowing who the hell I am, manages to keep smiling politely while walking backwards until I can’t touch him. Perhaps it’s because I’m a leering milf who stinks of rum. Perhaps it’s because I’m FAT.
Day 11) The next night I go out with my friend Gizzi. Our night starts at a boxing match and ends with us accidentally locked in a basement under a pub in Camden at 3am with a bunch of her mates, one of whom is a nice man in his 60s called Paul. “What does Paul do for a living?” I ask someone, before we all realise quite how trapped we’ve been by the person who’s gone off with the keys. “Er, Paul was the drummer in the Sex Pistols,” they reply. From One Direction to the Sex Pistols in 24 hours. 2016 is really saying something to me. It’s just that I have no idea what.
Day 12) I am very, very, very unwell.
MERE CRIMS y’all.
xx
Illustration by the lovely Louise Androlia, who has decorated all the Sophist mailouts and who also takes private commissions. You can find her at www.louiseandrolia.com.
Discussion about this post
No posts