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 perfectly 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.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were really nice at Magda and Jeremy’s. Magda did Christmas Eve with me; the stockings, helping wrap the giant pile of plastic crap, which ‘Santa’ had of course ended up ordering from Amazon, and putting it under the tree. And I seriously think Billy and Mabel thought it was great. Billy doesn’t really remember Christmas with Mark, and Mabel never had one. Billy only had two of them and he was so little . . . And the rest of the time we’ve been in and out of Rebecca’s house, crossing the road with pans of burnt food, and moaning about computer games, and her and the kids in and out of ours and next year is going to be so much better!
PART TWO
2013 DIARY
Tuesday 1 January 2013
Twitter followers 636, resolutions made about not making resolutions 1, said resolution kept (0), resolutions made 3.
9.15 p.m. Have made a decision. Am going to completely change. This year am not going to do any New Year’s Resolutions but instead focus on being grateful for myself as I am. New Year’s Resolutions would be expressing dissatisfaction with status quo rather than Buddhist gratitude.
9.20 p.m. Actually, maybe will just do Capsule New Year’s Resolutions in manner of soon-to-be Capsule Wardrobe.
I WILL
*Focus on being a mother instead of thinking about men.