Gill Sims - Why Mummy Swears

Anyway, it is done now. Well, most of it is done. Well, OK, I sewed in three labels, looked at the mountains of stuff that still needed labelling and went, ‘Life’s too short’, had a glass of wine and got a Sharpie and wrote their names in the rest. It’s possible that this happens every year, which is why the supply of name tapes never actually diminishes much.

But the alarm is set, bright and early for tomorrow morning, and another school year shall commence. Hopefully, this will be the year when my darling children finally reveal their hidden talents and turn out to excel at something, so I can be the proud, smugger-than-smug mummy in the playground, boasting shamelessly about their achievements, but given I am now struggling to come to terms with the fact that I am almost forty-two (FORTY-TWO! Withered cronedom is approaching at an alarming rate, despite the obscenely expensive creams I slather on my face) and I still haven’t discovered my own hidden talents, I think it is unlikely.

When I check on the children before bed I will just have one more peek at their drawers filled with their lovely clean new uniform, as it will be the last time it looks like that this school year. Within a week they will have transformed those bright white polo shirts into grubby, paint-stained rags, and when given clean laundry to put away will either dump everything on their bedroom floor willy-nilly or cram it all anyhow into the drawers, completely ignoring the time I spent carefully folding it for them. At least I have the wit not to iron their uniforms, though I eased my guilt at my slatternly ways by buying the ‘non-iron’ uniforms.

Wednesday, 7 September

Well, today went well. Peter and Jane have blithely spent the entire summer holidays getting up at 6 a.m. for no apparent reason other than to annoy me by galumphing down the stairs like a herd of elephants and then loudly fighting over who gets which iPad (as it is UNFAIR if one of them has to use the slightly older iPad, despite the fact that it makes NO SODDING DIFFERENCE to their horrible cartoons on Netflix), but this morning, when they had to get up and get ready for school so that we would actually start this academic year as we meant to go on – well, of course, this was the morning that they chose to sleep in!

I had to drag them out of bed, both of them snarling like angry weasels and complaining bitterly that they were still tired, while I spat back that they were probably still tired because they had not gone to bloody sleep when they were told last night. Instead, they had spent two hours after bedtime getting up for drinks of water and trips to the loo and come downstairs and tell me about how they couldn’t sleep until I became incensed with rage after tucking them back in for the sixth time and shouted that OF COURSE they couldn’t sleep, because they were up wandering around the house, and I wouldn’t be able to sleep either and maybe if they tried actually staying in their actual beds they might be able to get some actual sleep. And, more importantly, I could watch Game of Thrones without them walking in at every single inopportune moment just when someone had got their tits out! Apparently this was mean of me, and I was told once again how EVERYBODY ELSE in their class gets to choose their own bedtime and go to bed whenever they want, and also THEIR mummies let them watch 18-rated films and play Call of Duty . So all in all, I was distinctly lacking in sympathy for my darlings’ protestations of weariness and exhaustion this morning.

I did, however, manage to feed and wash and dress the cherubs (well, I didn’t actually wash or dress them, obviously, at nine and eleven they are – allegedly – perfectly capable of doing that themselves; I just hurtled into their rooms and shouted at them to PUT THEIR CLOTHES ON, while Peter fannied about with his Lego and Jane complained that she only had the ‘wrong kind’ of socks), and we were all ready(ish), with plenty of time to take the obligatory First Day Photo.

The First Day Photo, as every parent knows, involves finding the corner of your house that looks least like a shithole and hustling your offspring into it, while shouting, ‘SMILE, darlings, JUST FUCKING SMILE. I need one nice photo of you today, just one, so I can send it to your grandparents and show them what adorable poppets you are. And put it on Facebook, so people know I love you! Oh FFS, please, it’s not that hard. You both just have to SMILE and LOOK AT MY PHONE at the same time. No, you BOTH have to look at the phone. Together. No, with your eyes open. Because you’re not fucking looking at the phone if you’ve got your eyes shut, ARE YOU? And SMILE! For the love of God, SMILE!’

Some parents actually have special signs made for their children to hold, with the class the children are going into and jaunty little ‘Back to School’ phrases, the better to smugly remind us all via social media that they are #soblessed and just love #makingmemories, before lamenting that the holidays are just too short and their #mamahearts will be missing their #babies who are #growinguptoofast. I am not one of those mothers. I fear I do not even have a #mamaheart, as sadness is NOT the emotion I feel when my beloved munchkins are returned to the glorious bosom of education after six long bastarding weeks of us #makingmemories that mainly consist of everyone crying into ice-creams after being thwarted once again by the British weather.

It was especially important that I got a suitable photo of the First Day of Term this year, because a) I forgot last year and had to fake it the next day and bribe the children not to tell their grandparents that it was in fact a ‘second day of term’ photo that I sent them (with the inevitably scuffed shoes cropped out) and b) quite astonishingly, it is Jane’s last year at primary school. I can’t quite believe it. Everyone says, ‘Oh, they grow up so fast,’ and I always wanted to snarl, ‘Do they? Really? Because I am not convinced they will grow up at all, ever. I think that my life will now consist of trying to stop this small wrecking ball destroying my house and picking half-chewed organic rice cakes out of my hair, and that is ALL THERE IS NOW!’ but it really doesn’t seem that long ago that I was counting down the days until she could start playgroup, and now she is finishing primary school and next year will be at BIG SCHOOL!

I finally got some approximation of the photo I wanted, but not before I had ended up with an entire camera roll filled with photos of the children gurning and sulking, which I will feel guilty about deleting because #firstdayofterm, and, after yet another argument with Jane about why she is not allowed her own Instagram account (‘Because you have to be thirteen! Are you thirteen? No, no, you are not, so you are not having your own account! I don’t CARE if the rest of your class has their own account! It is not happening!’), we were ready for the off, for even I can manage not to be late on the first day of term.

Simon, obviously, wasn’t able to come with us for the first day of term because he had to go to work and be very busy and important. It never fails to astonish me how Simon’s busy and importantness always seems to coincide with school events, so I have to go myself. I used to make a point of talking about ‘MY HUSBAND’ in a loud voice on such occasions, but since my husband never actually materialised I have stopped doing that, as I am afraid that all the teachers think I am a mad fantasist who has invented a husband for some reason and only wears a wedding ring to affect some strange 1950s notion of ‘respectability’.

Anyway, the children were at least dispatched without further ado – Peter’s teacher is a rather sweet young probationer, but judging by her rather tight and low-cut sweater, there might be a sudden influx of daddies in that class volunteering to take part in school events, and Jane has a new teacher as well – an actual man is teaching in the primary school. Well, I say a man. In truth he is more of a boy – when I saw him in the playground I actually thought he was only slightly taller than an average Year 6.