08/12/2008
Downloaded
One strange fact about having children is that your old friends also start seeing you as their mum. Perhaps it’s the cosy post-maternity blubber or the stash of biscuits always kept at the ready to placate bawling children, but there has been a subtle shift in perception towards me from unreliable party animal to Mrs Tiggywinkle. Hence I found myself in Waitrose last weekend, shopping with the children and a friend who had come to stay for the weekend when she started popping into my trolley toiletries that she had forgotten to buy for herself. “You don’t mind do you?” she smiled winningly. I recalled the last time that she came to stay I had handed her my purse and asked her to pop into the shop to buy the Sunday papers. She returned with the papers, and also a bar of chocolate and a can of Coke. “I didn’t have any money so I hope you don’t mind but I took some out of your purse” she said, like a cheeky five year old. She is not the only one. Another friend just sits in my house - even when I’m not there, presumably imbibing the pleasures of my home cooking (pasta and fish fingers). She doesn’t seem to mind that I will ignore her for hours on end while I go about my chores, telephone calls, arguments. She doesn’t appear to want to even eat or drink anything. Still, I’m not complaining. Having endured many years living on my own, with people joking about the fact that I stored nothing in my fridge but champagne and cheese footballs, it is strange but not altogether unpleasant to suddenly find myself playing the role of big mama
