SNIPPET 1 – LEARNER
MUM
I love my life, my routine. There is
absolutely nothing I would change, but then one weekend, I had a phone call
that was about to change not only my sacred weekend but a part of me, too. For
you to fully understand where I am coming from, let me tell you a little about
myself, I promise it won’t take long.
I come from a very religious background.
Regardless of my parents’ preaching hellfire and brimstone, I have spent my
entire life rebelling, unlike my younger sister, Wendy, the role model of morality,
who has done it all by the big black book: courted, engaged, married and now
raising a family. Although I am a successful freelance journalist slash writer,
when I introduced Steve to my parents, straight away they knew he was the ideal
husband for their then-twenty five year old daughter. Finally, I had found a
man who could add stability to my life of debauchery. Steve is a morning
presenter on one of Nottingham’s local radio stations, and the only son of
Clive Rutherford, MD and Susan Rutherford, a respected paediatrician.
However, Steve and I have been living in what
my parents call ‘sin,’ for the past eight years. We are so happy with our life,
but to their disappointment, there are no signs of wedding bells or the patter
of tiny feet on the horizon. Why?
Because, I hate babies. Well, perhaps hate is
a little strong, and honestly speaking, how can I hate something I don’t know a
bloody thing about? Don’t misunderstand me, of course I’m fully aware of the
biological know how, of how one gets a baby. Trust me, I’ve had my fair share
of the practical, but NEVER, NEVER, have I been tempted in the least to follow
the experiment through. I personally think all men’s willies should be tattooed
with a baby warning, like the stickers you see about dogs and Christmas in the
back of a car window. It should read: A kid is for life, not for one night of
sex.
Another thing, what is all this crap about my
biological clock ticking, or we just know when we are ready to start a family?
So, what do these people do? One night they are sitting watching their nightly
soaps and the wife instead of saying, “Shall I defrost a chicken for dinner
tomorrow?” says, “I think we should start a family.” Then the husband considers
for a moment, during an advert, and replies, “O.K. love, but after I’ve watched
the news.”
So now, you know
that I, Polly Wilkins, am not in the least bit maternal.
SNIPPET 2 LEARNER
MUM
I rolled over gasping for breath. Reaching out
my arm, I grabbed my mobile, seeing WENDY on the screen of my phone. “This
better be bloody important, to interrupt my Saturday morning sex.”
I knew that this
would make my prissy sister cringe on the other end of the phone. Well, why
wouldn’t it? This was a woman who referred to sex as, “relations.”
“I’ll come straight to the point then,” said
Wendy.
“Funny, that’s just
what Steve was about to say!” I gave a smutty laugh down the phone, knowing
that her face would now be pulsating with embarrassment, and her heart rate
elevated at the mere thought of people copulating at this hour of the day.
“Yes, well, that’s
hardly something one should share. Polly, I need you to listen. Brian has this
two-day conference in Dublin. Normally, I stay at home, but this time partners
have to attend. There is this gala dinner where Brian will get at least one
award, and the Dublin CEO wants to meet us both. There is a big promotion
coming up over there…..”
I was becoming
agitated at how long my sister was taking. “Stop,” I interrupted. “Is this
going to be a long conversation? If it is then I need to know, because my
carnal desires are going off the boil here, Wendy.”
“You can be so crass, Polly. Mum is laid up
with her back. Dad can’t get coverage at work. Polly, I need you to watch
Josh.”
For a moment, I was
speechless, and then I broke out into hysterical laughter. “Sorry, Wendy, for
one minute I thought you asked me to watch Josh.”
“I did.”
Steve was being
annoying, trying to grab the phone from me. I pushed him away, guessing the
look on my face said I was now in no mood. I said with anxiety, “Either this is
a joke or Wendy is drunk, but she has just asked me to look after Josh for two
days.”
Steve rolled back
onto his side of the bed, cracking up with laughter. Through the laughing I
could just make out, “She must be drunk.”
“Wendy, are you ok? Is this some kind of after
birth depression?”
Wendy gave a heavy
sigh. “I think you mean postnatal depression, and no, I went through that after
Josh was born. He’s nearly a year old.”
“Really, he’s one? Is this why you are
depressed? Because, I always thought he was a little slow.”
“Polly,” Wendy screamed at me over the phone
line. “Josh is average for his age. Now will you blinking well help me out or
not?”
I sat bolt upright
in bed. I could feel my heart beating faster, the tightness in my chest
constricting my every breath. I was the last person my sister would ask to look
after her first-born. Hell, Wendy knew that I couldn’t even look after their
goldfish for a week without killing them. How the hell could I keep a baby
alive?
Now that I was hyperventilating, Steve took
control, as Steve always did when it came to my family.
Reassuring Wendy, Steve told her everything
would be fine. Steve had learned the art of pacifying the Wilkins family down
to a tee. It was amazing how just the calmness of his voice, and the serenity
on his face, could get them to agree to anything when it came to me.
As he put the phone down, a wave of hysteria
took over me, and I screamed, “What the hell were you thinking? Neither of us
have any idea about bloody babies!’ Feeling a churning in my tummy, I ran to
the bathroom to puke.
SNIPPET 3 LEARNER MUM
This was not me. I am Polly Wilkins, the independent career
woman, a free spirit, who never lets anything get the better of her. Yet
knowing it still did not stop the tears and mashed potato falling in globs from
my chin, as I pulled congealed dinner out of my hair. All I wanted to do was
lock the bathroom door, draw a hot bubble bath, and try to forget about today,
in the hope that when I emerged fresh and revived, I would find Steve starting
to prepare dinner and that it had all been a very bad dream. But I couldn’t. I
left Josh, much as myself, covered in food, yet as happy as a pig in muck,
grinding a rusk into the remains of his dinner on his tray. Shoving my head
under the shower, I quickly rinsed my hair, grabbed a towel, and wrapped it
around my head.
* * * *
As I walked down the hallway, it hit me like a smack in the
chops. “Oh my God, what is that smell?” Had old Mr Thompson’s cat sneaked into
the flat again? Or worse, Mr Thompson himself, both were renowned for roaming
the corridors, and wandering into any flat where they found the door unlocked?
I’m not saying Mr T., like his cat, left a steaming package in a corner, or
peed up a chair leg; let’s just say a quick hello to Mr T. left your eyes
stinging from the pungent ammonia pong. Only last month, I had padded naked out
of the shower to find Mr T. sitting on the sofa watching another gruelling
rerun of Murder She Wrote. Needless to say, that social call not only
cost us an arm and a leg in steam cleaning, but now left me trying to avoid Mr
T., who, when he looked at me, obviously only saw me naked.
Wandering around the lounge, I could not find any cat poop,
and the smell definitely was not as strong in here. When I retraced my steps
back to the hall, it seemed to be coming from the kitchen. Strangely, as I got
nearer to Josh, the smell got increasingly worse. I didn’t need to be Einstein
to know, seeing the strain on Josh’s face, what was happening down there in the
depths of his nappy.
I looked up to the heavens above, hoping that someone up
there would know what to do in this moment of sheer need. “Please, if you
really have any feelings for my weak stomach, Steve will walk through that door
right now.”
I looked at the door, willing it to open. I had to think
fast on my feet. After all, wasn’t that what mothers did in emergency
situations like these? They would spin around, and turn into Wonder Mum, or in
my case, Blunder Woman. Whatever. I had to get Josh out of his cackey nappy,
not only for my sake, this was surely a hazard to the environment. It was then
I spied my rubber gloves. “Good, now those will come in useful, it’s bound to
be messy down there.” Just thinking about it made my tummy churn. Then, like
resolving a mathematical equation, I pulled open a kitchen drawer. Rifling
through, I found what I was looking for: a surgical mask. Steve had bought each
of us one for our trip to Asia, when the scares were on about bird flu. Togged
up in my rubber gloves and mask, I took Josh to the changing mat, holding him
way out at arm’s length. Josh had a worried look on his face, not quite making
out what was happening, and why his strange aunt seemed to resemble the masked
person who had brought him out into the world. Perhaps he thought I was about
to push him back. Believe me, if Wendy had walked into the room then, I would
have.
Things were going fine. Josh seemed happy to lie there, as I
took off his trousers. Then, peeling back the little plastic tabs, and opening
up his nappy, I took one whiff, and instantly began to retch. “This is
definitely not what I have just fed you. Dear God in Heaven, what does my
sister feed this child, fertilizer?” I began to pull the nappy away from Josh.
“Yuck, yuck, yuck,” I whined, trying not to look, but at the same time, trying
to roll the nappy, yet the sticky tabs just would not stick. The last thing I
wanted was it to unfold and... “Oh! I can’t bear to think what is inside.”
Grabbing Steve’s golfing magazine, I wrapped the nappy inside. “There, that
will teach him to leave me.” And then it happened, something that I was not
expecting: a fountain of pee shot into the air. Jeeze, could this day get any
worse? Josh, with a load off his mind, was visibly enjoying his freedom, his
little legs kicking in glee—well, let’s face it, how would you like to walk
around all day with a cowpat stuck to your bum?
Through the gagging and the heaving, I was managing to clean
his bum, when the telephone rang. “You just stay there,” I instructed Josh,
keeping one hand firmly on his tummy, as I reached for the phone.
“Hi, it’s me,” my sister said. By the sounds of her happy,
slightly slurred voice, she’d had a pre-dinner sherry. “Just thought I would
call and see how things are going.”
“Oh, it’s all tickety-boo here.” My response sounded more
sarcastic than I’d planned, but hopefully Wendy’s one sherry had numbed her
perception.
“Sorry, Polly, this is a really bad line, you sound muffled.
Perhaps it’s being overseas.”
Yes, the Croft’s Original had kicked in. I had forgotten the
furthest Wendy had dared venture on her travels was Jersey, and then she had
worried about drinking the water, and if the food would be different. After
all, Jersey had French connections. Fighting to take my mask off, my towel fell
over my face in the process. My hair now felt like cardboard, from not washing
all of the food out.
“So I thought I would just say goodnight to my little
munchkin.”
My heart skipped a beat as I looked around frantically. Josh
had disappeared off his changing mat. “He’s not here, because…” Come on,
think, Polly think, what would Wonder Mum say? I had now jumped up
searching for my nephew under cushion covers, behind the sofa, “…because, he’s
already asleep. You know, after a full day playing with his aunt Polly, the
little darling is knackered.”
“Oh, bless his little cotton sock. So give him a big kiss
from me when you see him.”
“Oh, I certainly will. ‘Bye,” I said, and abruptly ended the
phone call.
I scanned the room for the little fellow—well—he could hardly
have gone far, but in the next few minutes he’d made it far enough to make my
lounge look like a war zone. There was a mighty crash, and the tower of CDS
fell to the floor, followed by a chortle. I dashed over to find Josh, crawling
over Steve’s pride collection, making his way towards my bookcase. Before I had
a chance to stop him, he began pulling out my cherished books. He picked up my
treasured copy of Little Women, and began sucking the cover. In all the
excitement, and nappyless, I could not help and smile as Josh peed on Steve’s
autographed copy of Tony Jacklin’s autobiography.
This story can also be found in
Life’s Unexpected Adventures Anthology Volume One
