Happy Days

Are you winking at me?

Last week, in a half-arsed attempt to potty train my youngest, I was up to my elbows in crap. My middle child was at home with tonsilitis and my daughter was expressing her rage through the medium of passionate slanging matches. Katie Price winked at me from her pink Range Rover, which just about finished me off. By Wednesday, the week was looking irrevocably bad. And then, all change. Here’s what God, were I a believer, should have told me when I was at my wit’s end.

He should have come down from high above and said, “Fear not, sweet no-one from Tulse Hill, for in-between trying to calm the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I have decided to shine a light on you. In the next few days, you will:

• Go out until 4am, and make the decision not to feel guilty about anything: the sore head, the taxi ride home or the fact that you will bore the tits off the taxi driver by rabbiting on about the genius of Fleetwood Mac, when you don’t even have any change to tip him.
• Eat two packets of cheese and onion crisps whilst typing. Then hook the bit that always gets stuck behind the very back tooth out with your finger. Savour this bit. It’s like the oyster on a chicken.
• Look at the bed sheets on all of the beds in your home. If they are in need of a change, think “Oh, what’s another couple of days? I’ll do it tomorrow.”
• Squeeze your partners arse, and say, “Hmmm, lovely.” If you have children, make sure they see.
• Talk to a friend about an article you enjoyed reading somewhere and then drift off half way through explaining it because you can’t really remember where it appeared or what it was about. Then get them to finish the conversation and enlighten you at the same time, because they actually read it.
• Paint the bits on the walls that you missed the first time around with a children’s budget paintbrush, because the patches are small. Then realise that you’re doing a really bad job because the bristles are flimsy and soft. Then do the same thing you did with the bed sheets, but make the days years. “Oh, what’s another couple of years? The walls always get ruined anyway. I’ll come back to it in 2015.”
• Sit listening to Leonard Cohen songs at 3am with someone you once entertained the idea of having a relationship with. Don’t touch or do anything that lovers would do. Just relish the feeling that you are still friends, and that if you had slept together in the past, you probably wouldn’t be friends now.
• Dream of owning a collection of Glen Campbell’s shirts.
• Stand at a piano and sing while somebody plays. If you can’t sing, speak the words. Don’t be embarrassed. Just think “David Bowie’s still got it, and his voice is a bit shaky now.”
• Have sex. If you’ve been selfish recently be generous for once. Get off your back and make an effort.
• Talk to a well-known restaurateur whom you’ve never met, but really admire for the work she does, at 2am. Exchange emails. Contact her the next day. Wait patiently for a response, and when it doesn’t arrive, think “Oh well, I was a bit drunk and she probably thought I was fairly annoying but I still think she is great.” Then feel overjoyed when an email arrives the next day to say how nice it was to meet you.
• Don’t feel bad for liking Gerald Scarfe.
• Go to a casting for a Whisky commercial. Ad lib in a scene where you are the ‘older’ woman in a bar, trying to seduce a young geek (there will actually only be 2 years between you.) Don’t feel too embarrassed, when the cameras are rolling, if the words “Are you going to buy me a drink or do I have to sing for my supper?” slip out of your mouth. Be prepared to not hear anything back.
• Make soup from the Guardian food supplement in a bid to save money. Then throw it all away because cauliflower tastes bitter, and because you fancy sausages.
• Ask someone “How was your half term?” even though it is no-where near half-term, and they don’t even have children. Then laugh all the way home at your imbecilic tendencies.
• Don’t worry if you think of having sex with everyone you meet, even when it’s your children’s matronly school office administrator. You’ve always done this. It doesn’t actually mean you want to have sex with them. You think about them on the loo, too, but that doesn’t mean you want to follow them into the bathroom. It’s just nerves.
• Send a curt message to someone on eBay who wants to bid on an item you have put up for sale, just because they don’t say please and thank you.
• Walk out of the room where an argument between your husband and daughter is just about to erupt. Go downstairs and make toast. Speak to the cat about what idiots they both are.
• Go to bed on five nights out of seven before midnight.
• Don’t spend time worrying that your husband may still be drinking behind your back. Most of the fun he has is usually when you’re not around.
• Watch Spitting Image clips on YouTube and wonder how everybody and everything is so censored nowadays. The days of Thatcher were good for satire.
• Go to bed and dream of having sex with George Osborne. When you realise it was all just a dream, you’ll feel so much happier.”

My week got a whole lot better.