Author: Felicity Cousins

My husband and I have something to talk about, other than who has not done the washing up.

We are going camping.

“It’ll be great,” I say, “we can really get back to nature.”

“You pack and I’ll book the campsite,” says my husband, excitedly opening his computer.

I feel as if I have been tricked.

“Can I help you pack mummy?” asks Milk.

I nod, shooting a sharp look at my husband, who seems immediately absorbed in his search.

“Of course you can darling.”

“Can I help you pack mummy?” asks Mayhem.

He is repeating everything at the moment. It’s like having two TVs on in different rooms, with a slight delay.

“Of course you can sweetie,” I say.

Mayhem stamps his feet. “I am not sweetie. I am Mayhem.”

I wink at Milk.

We are going camping for one night but it takes me two days to pack.

We leave the house.

“Did you just put our entire house into the car?” my husband says punching a pillow out of the way.

“Camping is all about being prepared.” I say trying to bend my leg around two crates of beer.

We drive for two hours and arrive at a field remarkably similar to the one opposite our house.

The boys run around screaming and throwing cow pats at each other, as we put up the tent. My husband crawls around on the grass grunting as he erects the ‘bedrooms’ under the flysheet, while I swear at him for tying the guy ropes into knots the last time we packed up.

I look around at other campers having fun, poking at barbecues, while their barefoot children ride bikes in the afternoon haze.

When we are finished we sit silently on our camp chairs sipping beers, while the boys play hide-and-seek. This involves Mayhem running frantically in a circle, with his hands over his eyes, shouting, “you can’t see me, you can’t see me,” while Milk counts to ten. The game is short.

Milk suddenly drops his trousers and does a wee next to a family eating sausages.

“I’ve done a wee mummy!” he shouts.

“Milk’s done a wee mummy!” squeals Mayhem.

I call them over and explain other people don’t want to look at that while they are eating.

Mayhem frowns: “I’ve got a willy, and Milk has got a willy, and daddy has got a willy, but you don’t have a willy mummy. You have a bum.”

I do have a bum, but I didn’t want the family behind the windbreak on the next pitch to think about it.

When the kids are asleep, we sit by the fire drinking and looking at the night sky, thinking (I assume) our own deep thoughts. My husband leans over to me. I think he is about to whisper something romantic in my ear, and I turn towards his moonlit face.

“The toilets are long drops,” he says quietly.

I stop star gazing. “So we have to crouch over a pit of other people’s poo?”

“Well you wanted to get back to nature,” says my husband passing me another beer.

It seems our children are the only ones in the world who do not get knocked out by fresh air. We are up with the birds, and my mouth feels as if someone has rubbed lemons into open ulcers.

My husband looks at the disposable barbecue and the soggy egg carton on the fold out table. “On the way, just a short drive from here, I saw a… you know…”

“What?”

“You know… the place we never go to, or talk about in front of the kids.”

I do know. He is talking about a fast food place, which is open early for breakfast. I can almost taste the hot coffee, the crisp hash browns and the breakfast muffin, stuffed with bacon and a perfectly round and flattened fried egg.

“That is not getting back to nature!” I say as I throw him the car keys and shove the children into their seats as fast as I can.

 

 

 

 

My husband calls at lunchtime, which is a treat after spending the morning having increasingly surreal conversations with Mayhem about Darth Vader shooting dinosaurs in their eyes.

“We need to sort out our life insurance.”

“Are you going to bump me off?”

He laughs but he doesn’t deny it. “You’ve got to stop watching Murder She Wrote all day.”

“I do not have the TV on all day.” I shout and Mayhem looks up from Peppa Pig.

“It was a joke darling.”

“Oh. Sorry.” I wonder where my sense of humour has gone. I’m guessing it went out of the window with the eight hours sleep and the time to go to the toilet on my own.

“We’re getting older.” My husband says.

“Everyone is,” I reply, but I know he is thinking about my recent big birthday.

It is rare for him to be sensible. I wonder why he has taken on this role. It might be because I have become less sensible.

“Do you think I could make money from online gambling?” I ask him one night.

“I think you could make money from doing your normal job.” He says.

“But I can’t do that. I’m looking after Mayhem at home. How can I do both?”

“You’ll have to arrange childcare.”

“But I don’t want someone else to look after him.”

My husband sighs. “Then you’ll have to look after Mayhem and not write – or just do it part time.”

I tried doing my job part time for a few months when Milk started nursery and Mayhem was a baby, but when you are interviewing the CEO of an airline or a global hotel company they don’t really think about the repercussions of moving a telephone call at the last moment. My carefully timed work schedule, based purely around when Mayhem slept, or in between nursery pick-ups, didn’t fit well with their schedule of trying to negotiate new routes or the opening of a five-star hotel in a war zone.

“There was this author who said she wrote an entire novel with her baby asleep under the table.” My husband adds.

I hate that author.

“OK I’ll just have to accept I’m not a writer at the moment, I’m looking after my children and that is absolutely fine. That’s what I wanted to do.” I say putting down the phone.

We use a rare child-free moment to see the financial adviser.

“So, what shall I put as your job?” He asks me.

“Writer” I say.

“Is that what you spend most of your time doing?”

“Err no, I guess I look after the kids most of the time.”

“So,” he is choosing his words carefully. “Shall we say you’re a Home Maker?

“A Home Maker?”

“Yes. I have to put something down – it’s all to do with risk assessment really. If you were a pilot, your life insurance might be higher, but if you’re staying at home all day, the risk of something terrible happening is quite low.”

“Mayhem pooed in the bath last night.” I say

He raises an eyebrow.

“I thought that was pretty terrible.”

My husband coughs but I plough on. “And last week Milk hit me on the chin with a Stegosaurus and it broke the skin. And I cried. That was petty terrible too. And… ”

“… Home Maker is fine” My husband says quickly.

On the way back, I am quiet. “What’s wrong?” My husband asks.

“I’m not just one thing you know. I am a whole person. You are a dad and a …” – I can’t remember what his job is – “… boss,” I say tentatively. “But I’m only allowed to be a mum.”

Later Mayhem is building a house out of Lego. I wonder briefly if I could write while he plays like this, but then he sees I am available and calls out.

“Mamma play with me?”

I become a bossy architect for the next twenty minutes and add an extra room and put in a table and chairs. Mayhem is delighted.

I am a home maker after all.

 

 

“We should all go out for lunch,” my husband says one morning.

He has been watching Milk and Mayhem play harmoniously together for ten minutes and now believes they will behave like humans when we leave the house.

“But going out for lunch is always a disaster,” I sigh, holding a yoghurt pot full of soil, which Milk has just presented to me as a gift.

“Not this time,” he says confidently. “We’ll go somewhere kid-friendly, with quick service, but with food you and I actually like.”

He is talking about a noodle chain where the food is cooked in front of diners, who sit on benches at long communal tables.

“But will Mayhem eat Asian food?” I ask, well aware that Mayhem eats everything put in front of him, including Lego.

“Loads of my friends go with their kids all the time.” My husband says, pulling on his coat.

At the restaurant the waitress tries to seat us next to some people on a long table in the middle of the room.

My husband is horrified. “I’m not sitting here,” he whispers, ignoring the stares from the family who are trying to eat their lunch while we hover over them.

“But that’s what they do here,” I say, bemused, as my husband strides off to the end of the restaurant to an empty table next to a mirror.

“Me, Mummy, Daddy and Milk!” shouts Mayhem with glee. He waves at himself.

The children are given paper and crayons and we are fooled into thinking we can order both a starter and a main course.

“You know the food is cooked fresh to order, so it will all come out at different times?” says the waitress.

We nod dumbly. But when she is gone I say.

“But why? What does she mean? All restaurants cook food fresh to order don’t they? Why can’t they bring the food out at the same time like everyone else?”

“That’s just what they do here…” says my husband winking at me.

“Well I think that’s lazy. They obviously can’t be bothered to get the timing right, and we all know that getting the timing right is the hardest thing about cooking…”

Our waitress has returned to serve us our healthy green smoothies. She seems to place mine rather heavily on my paper place mat.

The starter of duck pancakes follows, and to my surprise Milk and Mayhem love it. I watch in dismay as they eat my share.

By the time the noodles turn up I am starting to relax. We show the boys the chopsticks and they spend the next few minutes fighting each other across the table.

My husband interrupts and guides Mayhem towards his noodles.

“Me not like that!” Mayhem shouts, pushing the bowl away, his face going pink.

“What about the chicken?” says my husband, fishing a piece of meat out of the tangled dish.

“Me not like chicken!” Mayhem starts to cry. “Me want Mamma’s food.”

Mayhem is staring at my noodles, which I have just doused in chilli oil.

He wriggles from the bench and runs over to me, pushing Milk out of the way.

“Me want your food Mamma,” he cries.

I shrug and pick him up and let him have a forkful of my chilli-infused chicken and prawn noodles.

We watch as he turns red and starts spitting and spluttering.

I feel relieved he won’t be eating any more of my lunch, but my husband is glaring at me as he calmly spoons some sticky rice from his bowl onto a plate in the middle of the table.

While the boys try to get the gooey rice off their spoons and into their mouths, we shovel our food down as quickly as we can.

“It’s lovely,” I say, beansprouts hanging from my mouth.

“Mmm,” my husband replies, curry sauce dripping from his beard.

Some music comes on and Mayhem starts bouncing on his knees using Milk and me as support for his enthusiastic moves.

“Let’s dance!” shouts Milk climbing down from the bench.

“No!” I shriek, knowing Mayhem will follow.

My husband is swallowing a lot and has gone very quiet.

“I’m going to be sick,” he says.

He has indigestion. I can feel the same burning ball climbing my throat.

He leaves me with Milk and Mayhem spinning round and wiggling their bums next to another group of diners, who are doing their best to ignore what is happening.

I signal for the bill just as Milk yells, “let’s be dogs!”

Immediately both of them drop to the floor and start panting, while waiters carrying hot broth hop over them.

When my husband returns he finds us all crouched under the table with the sticky rice.

“Everyone enjoy that?” he asks as we drive home.

“Yes! Let’s go again!” shouts Milk.

“Me too! Me like noodles food!” squeals Mayhem, stabbing Milk with a chopstick.

 

 

My New Year’s Resolution is to get more sleep. This can only be achieved by going to bed at the same time as my children, which does limit my life. It even limits the time the Amazon Prime delivery drivers can see me in normal clothes.

“Are you ill?” my husband asks when he finds me slumped on the sofa in my pyjamas at 7pm.

“No, I’m not ill. I’m tired.”

“You sound tired.”

“I am tired. I’m tired all the time!”

“Me too,” my husband says. “Anything for dinner?”

“Nope. And it’s not a competition.” I say.

“I’m just saying I’m tired too.”

“But are you tired all the time?” I ask

“Yes. Shall I order a curry?”

I nod but I am thinking: How? How can he be tired all the time when he is asleep, when I am awake? How can he be tired all the time when he can sit on a train, while I am running around after Milk and Mayhem for 12 hours every day without even going to the toilet on my own?

I’m too tired to say all this because I’ve said it all before, and I’ve heard the counter argument, which is equally convincing.

“Actually, scrap the curry I’m going to bed.”

My husband shrugs and orders his Chicken Dhansak.

I need to go to bed early because I have a special alarm clock, which goes off at 4.20am. I can’t turn it off, or turn it down, or throw it across the room. I’ve tried to find the snooze option, but nothing works, because my alarm clock is Mayhem and his incessant shouting every morning.

“Downstairs Mummy! Downstairs! Doooooowwwwn Staaaaaaiiiiiirrrrrrrs Mummmmeeeeeeeeeee!”

I wish we lived in a bungalow.

And so, our day begins.

When people say ‘Margaret Thatcher ran the country on four hours’ sleep a night’, I always expect them to add, ‘and that’s why she messed it up.’

I take Mayhem downstairs before he wakes up the others. We spend our first few moments together wandering round the kitchen searching for slugs. This is their time. They slip out of the skirting boards at night and feed on dried baked beans under the table. They leave their silvery trails along the carpet in the playroom. But they will have to change their routine if they are to survive our early risings.

I find it hard to kill things, so we chuck the slugs into the Mud Kitchen outside.

“Slugs flying,” squeals Mayhem. “Like Batman mummy!”

Not really I think, but nod enthusiastically at his wild imagination.

Because someone who works in TV has decided that all children get up at 6am, there is no children’s TV on at this time. I scramble around for a Peppa Pig DVD, but find Peter Rabbit inside the box. Surely (and this does sound odd) that means Peppa Pig will be inside Peter Rabbit? But no, instead I find Fireman Sam smiling out at me.

“Peppa Pig?” says Mayhem hopefully.

I spend the next ten minutes opening and shutting DVD boxes, while Mayhem asks increasingly loudly for Peppa Pig. Of course, Peppa Pig is still in the DVD player, and we are soon accompanied by loud cheerful music and giggling pigs.

By the time my husband and Milk emerge at 6am, I have made banana cakes, thrown away some Lego which hurt my foot, washed up, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, discovered a plastic box with old porridge and raisins stuffed at the back of the fridge and nearly persuaded Mayhem to try it, done a load of washing, which is now in the drier, and am in the middle of an online grocery shop.

“We’ve been catching slugs too,” I say, not wanting to miss out anything I have achieved.

Milk’s eyes widen.

“I want to do that mummy. I want to catch slugs. Can I catch slugs with you and Mayhem tomorrow?”

“That would make my day,” I say, staring at the back of my husband’s head as he gently stirs his espresso.