Thursday July 17th – Vomiting Children Part Two

Matilda woke in the early hours of the morning to throw up all over her bedclothes.  Jason put her in the spare bed and ignored the sheets (good man at that hour in the morning).  She then threw up over the spare room sheets, but not until later on in the morning when I was awake enough to cope with laundry.  I thought this was rather good of her, all things considered.  She then pebble dashed two bathrooms.  After that she seemed to be quite a lot better.  Better out than in as my gran would say. Not necessarily better for me, I have to say.  I used to have a cleaning lady.  In the old days, when we had lots of spare cash (unfortunately this coincided with being married to a man I was no longer in love with.  The cleaning lady was a perk, but it wasn’t enough to make me stick around).  Now the cleaning lady is me.

My only consolation to no longer being able to afford a cleaning lady is the fact that at least I clean to my own satisfaction.  I have found, through the long years of having a cleaning lady and a gardener, that I am not very good at staff.  I empathise too much.  I befriend people.  Before you know it, they’re lounging about the kitchen eating my Victoria Sponge cake and telling me about their problems with ‘our Dave’ and how ‘it’s never been the same since the great hysterectomy of seventy six’ and I’m scrubbing the skirting boards and trying to avoid being invited to their sister’s, niece’s best friend’s wedding.  On the rare occasions I am actually forceful enough to make them do the job I’m paying them for I hate complaining about the fact that I don’t think it’s appropriate to clean the toilet by brushing it with their facial hair or that bacon fat is no substitute for Mr. Muscle.  I am a wimp.  I find myself with a filthy house, less money and committed to inviting a family of people who I have nothing in common with to family functions for the next sixty years.  It sucks.  I should be grateful that my poverty has saved me from such trials!

Tallulah was lurking healthily on the stairs while Tilly was puking her heart out, looking chipper and demanding double rations of everything for breakfast, gloating about the fact that she was feeling well and was officially off starvation rations.  Oscar was banging on the cot bars demanding mink and refusing breakfast altogether.  I fed and watered Tallulah, threw my coat on over my pyjamas and dragged everyone off to deposit Oscar at nursery with the worrying thought in the back of my mind that no sooner would I have gotten home than they would ring me to say that he had turned into the Exorcist and must be returned immediately.

I turned the volume up on the phone, ignored the piles of sick and had several cups of coffee before rolling my sleeves up.  I have scrubbed, washed, scrubbed, washed and scrubbed.  I already did a lot of scrubbing and washing yesterday, but it’s nice to have a theme.  I think I will get Widow Twanky to play me in the film of my life.  The tumble drier is doing overtime, but it’s piddling down with rain out there and I have washed every towel, bedsheet, mat and item of clothing in the house.  I am determined that any germs that are being spread will be foreign ones brought in through the quarantine barrier and no germs will be spread on my account.  I have stood over the children like a germ nazi at every conceivable bodily function and roared at them about washing their hands with sulphuric acid in temperatures worthy of an autoclave.  You will find no superbugs in this house, and if you do they will be very, very clean and rather shocked.

I on the other hand am now filthy and reeking.  I am running with sweat, my clothes are singing in close harmony and my hair is worthy of Wurzel’s worst ‘ed day.  My fingers are wrinkled prunes and I smell of Flash Liquid.  I gave up on the Eco friendly stuff this morning and got out the big guns.  I cannot wait for them all to go to bed so that I can have a shower and collapse in a heap to watch Master Chef.  It is my grand plan of the day.  As long as I can survive until Master Chef all will be well.  Thankfully my hips are improving.  Perhaps what they needed was forty eight hours of being vomited on.  It’s a thought.

Tilly is now looking much more the thing, and moaning about the fact that she has had to survive on dry bread and water all day.  This is a sure sign of feeling better.  Tallulah is Mrs Smug, because she has now progressed onto real food and got cake for pudding.  Oscar is still fine although he’s trumping for England. He keeps climbing onto the potty, doing a huge trump and waving his hands in the air shouting ‘uh oh! Bye bye trump!’  I am praying that the trumps are a false alarm and just a sign of an exuberant taste for baked beans rather than a prelude to more vomit.  Jason and I keep worryingly taking each other’s temperatures and asking each other if we feel well.  In less than forty eight hours we will be in a luxury hotel suite alone and neither of us want to spend it with all the windows open, holding each other’s hair while we vomit.  It just won’t be romantic at all.

In between being ill they have played Twister, which has made me laugh a lot.  They have lost the spinner board which tells you where to put your arms and legs.  Instead they take it in turns to shout at each other and try to make each other tie up in knots.  It’s very good for learning left and right, and also how to be a human pretzel.  Tilly is surprisingly bendy, even with the handicap of a gyppy tummy.  Oscar’s job was to charge whichever child was currently embroiled in human knotting and try to push them over whilst shouting ‘RRRAAAAHHHH!’ and smacking them repeatedly on the bottom.  They were all in stitches, but good stitches rather than casualty type stitches.  After this they made secret dens, first with the Twister mat and then with lots of bedclothes draped over the laundry baskets.  I have to say that they have been very resourceful this week, and quite good all things considering.  If it weren’t for the fact that they were so relentlessly omnipresent I would count this week as a glowing success.

I was sitting amongst the festering crap this morning, drinking my very expensive Illy coffee, which Olive magazine tells me is the true taste of Italy.  I can’t honestly say whether it is or not.  The last time I was in Italy was on my first honeymoon thirteen years ago and the memory of what brand of coffee I drank does not loom large in my life.  I am however a devotee of Illy and have been for much longer than Olive magazine has been pontificating upon its Italianness.  All I know is that it tastes good and it helps me get through the day without collapsing in a pile of exhausted drool.  It felt kind of cool to be drinking something that is so on trend. It’s not like I’ll be drinking the latest Sex and The City Cocktails or those Mexican things that are all the rage that I can’t even remember the name of they’re so fashionable.  We have to take our pleasure where we can.

Anyway, while I was pondering whether I felt any more Italian for drinking the right brand of coffee the postman dropped the post onto the mat.  I had a large envelope addressed to me which did not look bill like, so I ripped it asunder. Inside was the latest catalogue for the Jimmy Choo Autumn/Winter collection 2008.  I am on their mailing list, because last year when I got married for the second time I bought a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes to be married in.  I loved those shoes, and I may have bored you with the tragic tale of their love and loss before, but here it is again.

We got married with very little notice, so I had to get an outfit quick.  We went to Bicester Village where they have lovely, lovely shops which sell all the things I like a little cheaper than normal.  I got a beautiful bronze silk skirt from Coast and a bodice top in cream and black to wear with it.  These were a steal at £80 for the two.  Then there was the question of the shoes.  I found my dream shoe in Jimmy Choo.  They were champagne coloured silk wisps of heavenly delight with a four inch heel and an ankle strap made of diamante bling.  They were over three hundred quid.  I wrestled with my conscience.  I’ve never spent that much on a pair of shoes before and I would probably only wear them once.  They were however, perfect, gorgeous, once in a lifetime shoes.  In the end Jason bought them for me.  I pranced about a lot, tossing my hair and feeling fabulous.

They came with their own little cloth bag to keep them in and they were spectacular.  I kept getting them out to stroke them.  Two days after I bought them and less than a week to go to the wedding day I tried them on to show my parents.  The ankle strap on one of the shoes snapped.  I was inconsolable.  I rang the store.  They had no more and because the straps were jewelled they couldn’t be repaired as they would always have a weak point.  These were sale shoes and there were no more in my size (the £300 price tag was the reduced price.  Less than half price!!!)  I sent them back and got a refund.  I was gutted.

Now, because I am on their customer list they send me their catalogues.  It feels like a cheat.  I was a customer for two whole days.  I will probably never own another pair in my life.  It’s ridiculous.  I sat looking at these gorgeous shoes in this glossy A4 book while the bedclothes festooned in sick galloped around my ankles and the children swung off the light fittings.  I pondered the gap between where my life could have been, i.e. eating miniature French pastries for breakfast with my Fendi clutch at my side, tapping my on trend Choo Summer Wedges against the table legs of a gay Parisian cafe in the Marais and where it is; covered in sick in Glenfield planning an imminent trip to a Co-op full of transvestite alien celebrities.  I wept dear reader.  I wept.