Thursday 21 October 2010

High on coke in a kaftan, earrings in the washing machine and wino babysitters

   


It’s Thursday night and I’m facing the weekend again. It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly two weeks since I was out. I was OUT. In fact, I was OUT two times in a row. There’s just no keeping a good woman down.

On Friday night I had dinner with Chanel No. 5. where baby talk was politely off the menu. I wanted to drink myself into oblivion but I had a quiet word with myself and decided to save it for the following night.

I joined Cupcake and some of her friends at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. It was 60’s Go Go night and I made the effort even though I was slightly “off-scene” in a short kaftan (the only thing that would hide the lumps) and my knee high boots. I had pulled my once-glorious afro out of my mum’s loft, but even after I attempted to beat some life into it, it still looked like a bad joke. My son watched me with glee and confusion as I tried on the huge ratty wig and then began beating the floor with it.

We started off in Liverpool Street with a few rum and cokes before making our way to Brick Lane. A group of young black boys tried to coax us into some photos they were having taken. Knowing Cupcake as I do, I knew she would be tempted by their invitation but I reminded her that whilst the twilight may be kind to us now, those boys would be looking at the snaps in the cold light of the following day and wondering who the fuck the old birds were. A few more drinks and then we made our way to the club, joining the short queue outside. One of our party checked her pockets and was dismayed to find the remains of an egg mayonnaise sandwich and an Ikea pencil. How very rock and roll.

“In the old days you’d probably have found an old coke wrap.” I told her.

Inside we watched a couple of Asian women throw off their clothes and Miss Ikea Pencil proceeded to tell me about a friend of hers who just got a new boyfriend. The boyfriend stayed the night and sleepwalked out of her apartment wearing a few vintage scarves and a couple of handbags and boarded a bus going through Old Street. He woke up naked, bar the aforementioned accessories, standing up on the night bus, holding on to one of the poles. Eh-hem. Awkward.

At somewhere around two we left the club and ended up at a party in a late night café in Mare Street, Hackney. It wasn’t really the place to be seen in a kaftan wearing fake eyelashes but my fears were soon allayed when I realised everybody (and they were an eclectic bunch) was utterly fucked and could barely see straight. They probably thought I was some kind of colourful hallucination. I felt strangely sober and tucked away another couple of rums.

It wasn’t long before I was getting into a taxi. My drug induced nights well and truly behind me and my back was aching. I reached home around 3.30am. Bushman was dozing, all children looked contented and ‘Blue Velvet’ was playing on the radio. It was then that I realised I had drunk way too much coke. My eyes were wide open until about 5am. I didn’t even have a hangover the next morning. There was a sense in which I was disappointed in myself. Since then I’ve had countless sleepless nights all of them due to baby and none of them due to coke.

Today at 7.45am a man came to fix my washing machine. This is what he discovered in my tubes.


and this pair of earrings



I think my son put them in there.....

It has to be said that things have been little tense in our household of late. Baby Trout keeps us up most of the night which makes everybody tetchy. I count any extra minutes Bushman gets to sleep, keeping them on some kind of mental ‘I do more than you do’ list. I get pissed off that he gets to leave the house everyday and behave like a real person and that our children seem to fit in around him whilst I fit in around every body else. As you can imagine, I’m no shrinking violet and the feminist inside me is constantly shaking her fists, counting the ways in which I am oppressed and shouting about it. In fairness to him the social policies in this country don't help. I should have moved to Denmark.

Because of all this drama, Bushman keeps going on about hired help. Fine, as long as they are neither thinner or better looking than me and he pays for it. It seemed like fate when a rather professional looking leaflet dropped through my door advertising childminding services.


As I looked at it more closely I realised that nobody had run the spell check over this leaflet - "Childmimding" being a favourite. The layout was hideous, nothing was justified and it was clearly written by someone with little command of the English language. The website was even weirder.

Then I wondered.... 'Donysieus' was that supposed to be 'Dionysus' - the god of wine?

Now I like a drink like the next girl,  but really I'd say you had one too many love.......

5 comments:

  1. Bloody hell, can I come out with you next time? I can only offer an IKEA pencil, a tissue and a nectar points card ...

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  2. Interesting, isn't it: one child and your life can continue pretty much as before (with a few adjustments, obviously). Two? The wheels fall off. No-one mentions this to mums of single kids, btw; it's like some great big joke the mums of all multiple kids play on those who are thinking of a second child... (Sorry, didn't mention this before...)

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  3. I just want to reiterate that it was Coca Cola! I couldn't snort coke again, especially after that programme Bruce Parry did about the Amazon. I have a geek crush on Bruce Parry.

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  4. Oh I am feeling so exactly the same right now. I got some verbal abuse this morning for daring to ask at twenty to seven if he could take the baby so I could have half an hour of sleep before having to get up. If he does that again, I think I'll punch him. (Yeah - really feeling you there.)

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  5. All I can say is I have missed your blog Troutie - I havent logged into blogland for ages due to a million and one reasons but I had 5 minutes this morning and what a joy! Potty Mummy - I have four kids and no wheels steering or otherwise any more - or sanity!

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