Read Diary of an Unsmug Married Online
Authors: Polly James
Diary of an Unsmug Married
POLLY JAMES
Diary of an
Unsmug Married
For Mark, Daisy and Jack, with love
Table of Contents
(Or most of it, anyway. Mum didn’t give me this diary until my birthday. I think she got it in the sale.)
MONDAY, 10 MAY
Max has only gone and organised a surprise party for my so-called ‘big’ birthday tonight. I
bet
that counts as grounds for divorce. I could cheerfully kill him anyway, even though he tries to make up for it by bringing me breakfast in bed.
‘You’d better eat fast, Molly,’ he says. ‘
And
you’ll have to leave opening your presents until tonight, otherwise we’ll both be late for work. We must have had a power cut while we were asleep – the time on the alarm clock’s out by miles.’
‘What is
wrong
with you two?’ says Connie, coming into the room uninvited, and – even worse – followed by Josh. ‘You must be the only people in the universe who don’t use your phones to wake you up. Apart from geriatrics, of course.’
‘They’re nearly geriatric themselves,’ says Josh, whose opinion no one asked. ‘Especially you, Mum, as now you’re
another
year older.’
That’s not half as funny as he and Connie appear to think it is, and I’d disinherit the pair of them if I owned anything worth inheriting. As I don’t, I decide I’d better rise above the provocation and get ready for work instead. I leave Connie and Josh fighting over what’s left of my breakfast, which seems to involve fencing with slices of bacon.
It’s only when I arrive at work that I realise that I am wearing
exactly
what I will still be wearing when my stupid party starts, as soon as I get home again: an un-ironed dress, to match my equally un-ironed face.
And
I’ve left my make-up at home! This evening’s doomed to be a disaster, before it’s begun.
I just hope, for Max’s sake, that he’s at least had the sense not to invite
anyone
younger than me … including our children.
TUESDAY, 11 MAY
Bloody hell, my head hurts. Thank God I’d already arranged to take today off as holiday, so at least I can lie around on the sofa this morning, groaning intermittently. I am
never
drinking gin again.
Last night was as horrendous as predicted, and now Max is sulking because I didn’t look surprised enough when I came home from work to find my birthday party in full swing. So far, I’ve managed to refrain from pointing out that his decision to tell me about it in advance may have diminished the element of surprise somewhat – but I did mention that an astonished expression would be a lot easier to fake if I’d had Botox like Annoying Ellen from next door.
Why the hell
did Max have to invite
her
? She seemed quite nice when she first moved in, a few weeks ago, after her divorce came through – but before I’d downed my first gin, she’d already started swanning around announcing to all and sundry how much she
loves
sex, and how all she wants for
her
birthday is a man with a big you-know-what.
Every male in the room immediately began to salivate at this bloody nonsense, presumably imagining his particular appendage as Ellen’s saviour, while we wives became ever-more invisible and murderous, particularly me. I have gone right off Ellen; and gin. Not to mention birthday surprises.
WEDNESDAY, 12 MAY
So there’s to be a ConDem
fn1
Coalition, and the hung Parliament is finally over – a missed opportunity, if ever I saw one. I’d quite like to have hung a few MPs myself, starting with The Boss, aka Andrew Sinclair. He’s still the MP for Lichford East, by some miracle, not that he seems grateful for that.
He spends the whole day driving Greg and me nuts, shouting about why ‘that idiot’ Gordy
fn2
didn’t resign sooner, to ‘save the situation’, and moaning about the Labour Party being relegated to Her Majesty’s Official Opposition.
fn3
We can’t see what difference
that’ll
make – or not to Andrew, anyway – given that he’s been voting against his own party for the last decade at least. That’s probably why he didn’t lose his seat, though
he
puts it down to the Just for Men he applied in the run-up to polling day. I doubt he’s right, seeing as his new ‘hair’ looks as if it’s been painted on, but Andrew says it proved a much bigger asset than Gordon Brown’s ‘satanic smile’.
Greg and I don’t argue with him, as we’re just relieved that we still have jobs, for what
they’re
worth – which is a lot, according to The Boss. Apparently, the country can’t run without MPs’ staff, ‘especially not those promoted to senior caseworker
fn4
in a moment of weakness’ (i.e. me).
‘So we’ll have no more self-indulgent holidays taken to get over birthday hangovers, Molly,’ he says at lunchtime today. ‘All hands are needed on deck from now on – at all times – for
The Fightback
.’
Andrew is on his way out of the office when he makes this last statement – en route to his favourite watering hole – so I ask him how
he
can afford to take time off. He doesn’t have an answer to that.
THURSDAY, 13 MAY
I’ve been so busy planning Ellen’s murder in my head all day (ever since she waved to me and Max this morning, while wearing very little) that now I’ve smoked a bloody cigarette, without realising I was doing it. So that’s my post-birthday no-smoking resolution up in smoke.
‘Bugger it,’ I say, as I stub the cigarette out, and look around to check if anyone has caught me in the act.
‘Bugger what?’ says Connie, appearing from nowhere, as teenagers so often do. ‘What have you done now, Mum?’
‘I had a cigarette, by mistake,’ I say. ‘I need to pull myself together. What shall we do this evening?’
‘Let’s go late-night shopping,’ says Connie – so off we go into town, where I take back almost all my birthday presents, as usual.
Maybe one year Max will buy me something I actually want, rather than whatever comes to hand in M&S at the very last minute. I do keep Connie’s present, though – a copy of
Bridget
Jones
’
s
Diary
. It’s bloody funny, but I really can’t see what Bridget thinks married people have to be smug about.
Especially not when they’re parents, too. Connie insists that we go to the Topshop sale, and persuades me to spend all my refunded birthday money while we’re there. I feel quite cool and trendy – until we get back home, when I try my new clothes on, only for Josh to look up from stalking everyone he knows on Facebook and say, ‘Mum – you do realise you didn’t get any years back for your birthday?’
I smoke four cigarettes in a row and turn all the mirrors to the wall. Max asks whether there’s been a death in the house, and I say, ‘Yes. My self-esteem,’ but he’s already turned the television on, and isn’t listening to a word I say.
FRIDAY, 14 MAY
I wish The Boss would bugger off to Westminster and annoy the London staff for a change. Thanks to the election, he’s been here constantly for at least a month, using my computer and causing havoc in the process.
When I switch it on today, up comes a notification:
79 print jobs pending.
Andrew just can’t seem to grasp that we connect to the Parliamentary system by remote access, the stupid man.
All you have to do is accept that there’s often a delay between issuing a command and its implementation, but no – that’s beyond his comprehension. He just keeps on clicking away, swearing furiously, until the system crashes; at which point he stomps off, leaving me to sort it out. And
his
is one of the brains we rely on to run the country – or did, until a few days ago!
Anyway, while I’m cancelling seventy-eight of the seventy-nine print jobs, Frank Dougan phones to demand an ‘emergency’ appointment at today’s constituency surgery.
‘I’m
really
sorry, Mr Dougan,’ says Greg, sounding almost as if he means it, ‘but I can’t give you an appointment, emergency or not. Since you moved house, you don’t live in the Lichford East constituency any more, so now you’ll have to see your new MP.’
Greg manages not to add that, even if that wasn’t the case, Frank is a dangerous loony that we don’t want anything more to do with – and whose absence from this afternoon’s surgery ensures that proceedings are blissfully nutter-free, for once. We even manage to finish on time, and then The Boss goes straight off for a meeting at the Council, so it looks as if the rest of the day is going to be quite peaceful as well.
Famous last words. I am just gathering my notes together and straightening the chairs, when who should walk in, but Frank. My joy truly knows no bounds.
‘Oi, you!’ he says. ‘Where’s your boss? No more bloody excuses – I need to see him.
Now
.’
‘He isn’t here,’ I say. ‘Surgery has finished and, anyway, you aren’t a constituent any longer, so you need to see your own MP. As my colleague has already told you.’
Rational argument is sometimes grossly overrated, not to mention ineffective. When Frank finally accepts that The Boss isn’t in the building, he gets me by the throat and backs me against the wall – yet again. That’s the third time that he’s done it this year.
I have to stand very still, look calm and try to talk him down – not easy when you can hardly breathe – until Greg finally comes to see where I’ve got to, and catches Frank by surprise, which causes him to lose his grip, thank God. I bet I’ve got broken veins all over my face.
Before Frank can re-group, I wriggle free and run out of the room, closely followed by Greg. We’ve only just managed to close the security door in the corridor when Frank starts banging on the glass and shouting, but we don’t listen, and we don’t look back.
We’re too busy staggering upstairs to the office, where we collapse at our desks. I don’t know which of us is the more freaked out, but Greg’s voice has definitely gone up a couple of octaves.
‘You’ll have to phone The Boss to tell him what’s happened,’ he says. ‘I can barely talk, I’m so out of breath.’
‘
You
can barely talk?’ I say. ‘I’m the one who was nearly strangled. And you’re miles younger than me, so you should be fit enough to handle a few flights of stairs.’
At this, Greg first points out that the Labour Government sold off the playing field at his old school, and then pretends to have lost his voice entirely, so there’s no choice but for me to phone Andrew and explain Frank’s latest failure to manage his anger.
Andrew waits until I’ve finished, and then asks me what
I
did to
upset
Frank.
I hang up on him. It’s closing time, after all, and there’s only so much lunacy a person can take in the course of one day before it starts to become contagious. As it is, it takes me ages to get home from work, as I have to walk sideways to make sure that Frank isn’t sneaking up on me from behind.
He isn’t, thankfully, so I arrive home in one piece, to find that Max is already there. I’ve only just begun telling him about my day when he interrupts to tell me all about a ‘bunk bed emergency’ he had at work, and I never get to finish
my
story. I’m sure Max thinks being a furniture inspector
fn5
puts
him
on a par with paramedics.