*Order piles of plastic crap from Amazon from ‘Santa’, impossible to open in their Plastipaks, with twelve bits of wire fastening each thing to the cardboard backing. But instead encourage Billy and Mabel to choose one or two gifts each from ‘Santa’ which are meaningful. Perhaps made of wood.
*Go on the St Oswald’s House Christmas cruise, but instead take action to make a Christmassy Christmas.
3.15 p.m. Right! Action stations! Have sent email to just about everyone I know, Magda, Talitha, Tom, Jude, Mark’s parents, several of the mothers from school, saying, ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’
4.30 p.m. Just back from school run. Was just getting everyone organized when Rebecca the neighbour came and rang the doorbell. She was wearing a pair of tartan knickerbockers, a low-cut frilly top, a heavy leather belt with chains and studs and, in her hair, a robin in a nest which I recognized from the Graham and Green Christmas decoration display.
‘Hello. Do you lot want to come over?’
We were all wild with excitement! At last! We clumped downstairs into Rebecca’s Downton Abbey-like kitchen: dark wood floorboards, a rough-beamed ceiling, old wooden school table, photographs, hats, paintings, a huge statue of a bear and worn French windows opening onto a hidden world of brick pathways, long field-like grass, a life-size cow with a crown on its head, a laminated motel sign saying ‘Vacancy’ and chandeliers in the trees.
We had a really good fun evening sitting at the kitchen table drinking wine and shoving bits of pizza at the children while the girls dressed up Rebecca’s cat in scarves and dolly’s dresses and the boys threw fits when we asked them to come off the Xbox.
‘Is it normal to be too frightened of your own son to tell him to come off?’ said Rebecca, staring vaguely at them. ‘Oh, fuck it. GET OFF THE BLOODY XBOX!’
There’s nothing nicer than a friend who claims her own children are more badly behaved than your own.
I explained my whole theory about parenting being better if it was like a large Italian family having dinner under a tree while children play. Rebecca poured more wine and explained her theory of child-rearing, which is that you should behave as badly as possible so that the children will rebel against you and turn out like Saffron in Absolutely Fabulous. We made plans about Casual Kitchen Suppers, and holidays we would never go on, going on ferries between the Greek Islands with some sort of InterRail Pass only for ferries, and everyone – children included – carrying nothing but a toothbrush, swimsuit and floaty sarong.
Finally, as we were about to leave at 9 p.m., Rebecca said, ‘What are you doing for Christmas?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Well, come to us!’
‘We’d love to!’ I said, quite carried away.
10 p.m. Gaaah! Just checked email. Have set off giant guilt trip amongst all friends and acquaintances, going from nothing to do at Christmas to impossible multiple bookings. The following plans are now in place:
Tom: We are taking the children to join him at Drag Queen Christmas Market in Berlin.
Jude: We are taking the children to her mother’s tiny council house in the rough part of Nottingham she refuses to leave (don’t ask) and then going grouse shooting with Jude’s father (exactly) and his friends in the north of Scotland.
Talitha: We are bringing the children to join, as she put it, ‘an ill-defined group of dubious Russian money-launderers on a luxury vodka boat on the Black Sea’.
Admiral and Elaine Darcy: We are causing them to cancel their Christmas in Barbados in order to spend it with my children messing up their pottery collections, and scouring their immaculate Queen Anne house in Grafton Underwood for an Internet connection.
Daniel: We are joining him on a romantic weekend in bedroom at undecided European city with someone called Helgada.
Billy’s friend Jeremiah’s mum: We are celebrating Hanukkah with Jeremiah’s dad, grandma, four aunts, seventeen cousins and the rabbi in Golders Green, though there’ll be quite a lot of time when they are all at the synagogue.
Cosmata’s mum: We are going to watch her oldest child perform as an extra in Wagner’s Ring cycle in Berlin.
Mum and Una: Still the St Oswald’s House over-fifties Christmas cruise.
I mean, maybe the children would enjoy the Drag Queen Christmas Market?
Oh God, oh God. Just when I have made friends with Rebecca I have proved myself to be a total flake.
10.15 p.m. Just called Magda.
‘Come to us,’ she said firmly. ‘You can’t possibly do any of those things with two kids, or stay in your house relying on a neighbour you’ve only just met. Come to us in Gloucestershire. I’ll get the couple next door over from the farm – they’ve got kids the same age and that’s all kids need. Plus, there’s nothing they can spoil and we’ve still got all the Xboxes. Never mind anyone else. Just email them back quickly, and say you’ve found a perfect kid-friendly plan. And tell your mum you’ll do a special Christmas at St Oswald’s House when you get back. It’ll all be perfectly fine.’
Monday 31 December 2012
Christmas has been perfectly fine. Mum was perfectl
y happy with the post-Christmas-Christmas plan and had a whale of a time on the cruise, calling up, gabbling about ‘Pawl’ the pastry chef and some man going into everyone else’s berths. Rebecca thought the whole overbooking thing was hysterical and said we should definitely do the Drag Queen Market or the money-launderer’s vodka boat and if not she was available for wine and burnt food.