Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy(34)
They were both asleep. I opened the curtains to see if the owl really had been there. There it was, still, gazing at me unblinking. I looked back for a long time, then closed the curtains.
CHRISTMAS
Friday 7 December 2012
Twitter followers 602 (have broken 600 ceiling), words of screenplay written 15 (better though utter rubbish), Christmas invitations (start of day) 1, Christmas invitations (end of day) 10, ideas re what to do re sudden plethora of invitations largely unsuitable for small children 0.
9.15 a.m. Right. Christmas Resolutions:
I WILL
*Stop feeling sad and thinking about or attempting to live through men, but think about children and Christmas.
*Have a Christmassy Christmas and make a new start.
*Make everything Christmassy and enjoy Christmas.
*Not be scared of not making a Christmassy enjoyable Christmas.
*Be more Buddhist about Christmas. Even though is Christian festival and, by its very nature, therefore, not Buddhist.
I WILL NOT
*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, f*ck 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.