Tuesday 7th April – Chillaxin’

The house is empty of children. My wonderful cousin came at dawn to take the girls out for the day. Wonderful nursery had a space for the boy and wonderful husband insisted I take it and he pay for it so that I can chillax.  How nice is that?

My excess birthday money is now gone, which is a relief. The smouldering in my pockets has now died down and I can get back to my normal useless financial juggling without the burden of knowing there is excess cash for treats tormenting me every millisecond until it is spent. The idea of saving is a bit of a foreign concept to me. It just seems immoral given the fact that I may swoon under a bus tomorrow.  Better to spend it all now and have no regrets.

I was quite cunning. I went to the lovely remaindered bookshop so my craving for yet more books I will never have time to read was sated and appeased by both quality and quantity.  I bought a giant sack of books which I heaved around town, thus also ensuring I had my exercise for today.  I then went to TK Maxx in the hope that they would mysteriously have imported the Alaia shoe boots I wanted from Bicester and dropped the price by a cool three hundred quid.  They had not, but I got frivolous Rocket Dog wedges in a kind of Cath Kidston style print of pale blue with tea roses.  These made me happy.  Then a pair of tailored Sticky Fingers black wool trousers, a grey Billabong spaghetti strap smock and a black Calvin Klein vest, long enough to hide any lumpy bits.  Nice. Nice. Nice.

I have bought more Easter eggs for the children, after having eaten all the other ones I bought earlier. I am going to hide these ones better and pray they last until Sunday.  Now it will be like the days when the tooth fairy is too monged out to to her job and forgets to collect stray teeth.  This time the Easter bunny will forget it is Easter until the last minute and then spend four hours of its small and hoppy life running frantically round the house saying very unEasterish things like: ‘Where did I put those fucking eggs? Gahhhh!’ I know I won’t eat these eggs because the lovely chocolate goddess, Justme, has sent me a huge bag full of the most exquisite eggs for my very own self.  They were sitting on my doormat when I got back from shopping and I am going to indulge myself later when the children are in bed.  That woman is a chocolate genius.

I went to Boots. I needed shampoo and conditioner. I needed spray in conditioner for the kids so that they don’t get galloping head lice (it does work as long as you keep changing the brand).  I needed a new eyeliner after my last one finally gave up the ghost and I ended up looking like Robert Smith and trying to get bits of splinter out my eyelashes.  I needed new perfume.  I wear Stella McCartney, the original. I have to wear it. It is the perfume I wore when Jason and I were courting.  He likes it.  He gets funny if I smell like anything else.  This is a shame because I also love Bvlgari’s Green Tea and Coco by Chanel.  I am not allowed to smell like these things anymore.  He cries.  Luckily I still like Stella McCartney. I just pray she doesn’t change the recipe or go out of business or Jason may have to either assassinate her or get a new wife.

By the time I had got all my goodies I had spent more in Boots than anywhere else, ever.  This is why I try not to go into Boots very often.  It doesn’t matter what I go in there for I never come out having spent less than fifty quid.  It is insane.  I think they put something in the air, you know, like the supermarkets that smell of warm bread even though they don’t have a bakery section.  It’s something that convinces you that you can’t live without pink gingham tweezers at twenty quid a pop and an exfoliating wand in the shape of a weasel etc.

While I was paying and weeping a little old man wandered up to the tills and promptly crashed to the floor.  He just crumbled.  He crumbled straight into a display of cheap perfume which he knocked over as he fell.  He ended up on the floor surrounded by floral stench, bits of glass and blood.  Luckily for him he was unconscious at this point.  The Boots staff were crap.  It took them five minutes to get a member of staff who was a first aider.  In the meantime he had about fourteen women flapping around him uselessly.  When the first aider arrived she was ten and terrified.  It was at this point someone suggested calling an ambulance.  This was the only sensible thing they had done for the duration.  He was just coming round as I left.  Poor bloke.  Remind me never to swoon in Boots.  i hope they rinse him down in the hospital. That perfume smelled truly vile.  I already had a headache when I went in.  It was exacerbated by shrieking women and floral effluvia. Blee.

After seeing this and thinking that it could have been me, and how lucky I was, I had to go and have a relaxing sit down in Starbucks where I accidentally on purpose inhaled their rather lovely new milk chocolate and hazelnut muffin range.  Then I treated myself to a taxi home.  It was so nice not to have to worry about being offered drugs or being mistaken for a pensioner. It was positively decadent.

I am now going to finish reading the Masqueraders in a very hot bath before the kids get home. I am hoping the second lot of painkillers will clear this nasty headache. I woke up with it, and although I have bravely battled on, it is making me go all frowny in a very thoughtful and unlovely sort of way.  The bath/book/drugs combo  is the final decadence of the day before the normal bedlam ensues.  My cousin is very outdoorsy.  She used to be in the army and is good at running about in mud.  This means the children will come home reeking and vile, but very happy.  This is why I’m going to steal the bathroom now while it is clean and has no interesting stains on it. I am so wise.

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