by Moira Murphy
You Must Be Jo King
Not so much a diary, more a way of life!
Moira Murphy
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by
The Book Guild Ltd
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Copyright © 2017 Moira Murphy
The right of Moira Murphy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This work is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead.
ISBN xxx
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
To Eddie,
For keeping the faith
–x–
And,
To the rest of the Gang,
With Love
–x–
Contents
IT’S LIFE AS WE KNOW IT
DR WATSON, I PRESUME
FANTASTIC FRAN
SWINGERS AND THE PTA
PLEAS AND FLEAS
THE IMPORTANCE OF
NOT BEING ERNEST
AT LAST, THE SHIP’S CAT
COLD IN THE KIDNEYS
MOVE OVER JOAN CRAWFORD
STAY! NO WAY
STRANGE ENCOUNTERS OF THE CANINE KIND
THE WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION
GREASE IS THE WORD
HEN PECKED
HI GUY
THE HERO FROM ZERO
BYE GUY
PLAY IT AGAIN SAM
PARTY ANIMAL (ORANGUTAN) STYLE
IN AT THE DEEP END
TAMPON TROUBLE
IT’S A COP-OUT
YOU’RE KNICKERED
TOO MUCH REFLECTION
GOING FORWARD BY GOING BACK
RECOVERY AND DISCOVERY
SETTLING IN
NEANDERTHAL MAN
PROXY INTRODUCTIONS
EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY
GRAB A GRANNY
HOT OR WHAT!
MILLIE THE PATTING DOG
STEADY ON
THE MERCY MISSION
COMPLIMENTS AND COMPLICATIONS
NICKED
WHAT’S IN A NAME
WITNESS THIS
PARTY PREPARATIONS
WEDDING BELLES
A FLASH IN THE PAN
IN THE NICK OF TIME
AND WE ALL LIVED
HAPPILY EVER AFTER
1
IT’S LIFE AS WE KNOW IT
Life. Some people manage it. Excel in it. Pirouette in ballet shoes around it. Amanda, the managing director’s ex PA was one. Amanda was never late, never flustered, never a hair out of place, no chipped nail varnish, no discernible knicker line, wouldn’t be seen dead hauling up a bra strap and heaven forbid that a dog’s hair should come anywhere near her, oh-just-grabbed-it-in-sales, Armani jacket. No, childless and dogless, Amanda merely levitated in Chanel and cool detachment, an inch or two above us lesser mortals, until, that is, the day she drifted off and into the passenger seat of some high-flying city-type’s Porsche.
Being one of the lesser mortals and surviving in some parallel universe to Amanda is me. Sadly, no city-type with a Porsche is waiting in the wings to whisk me off, or if he is I haven’t noticed, distracted as I am by demanding kids and picking up dog poo and giving myself a pat on the back if it gets to lunchtime and I haven’t had a breakdown. Me, I couldn’t even manage to hang onto George and his Qashqai.
Me, is approaching forty and about to be divorced; George, my ex, having upped and left ten months ago to live with ‘soul mate’ Fran. Now, although I realise it’s possible I should have been a bit more devastated by this than is actually the case, the fact remains, I’m not. Peeved, yes, devastated, no. Peeved because while George is living the life of Riley, I now have sole responsibility for Lucy, fourteen next birthday, and Josh, nearly thirteen, who would gladly shop each other to the local mad-machete man without a seconds thought and, just to make absolutely sure my mental capacities are stretched to breaking point, I also now have Millie, a cross-bred Springer Spaniel who, it has since transpired, George brought home for the kids as a distraction to his leaving. His plan has worked because the dog is driving us, well me anyhow, to distraction and, although my previous knowledge and experience of dogs is non-existent, the appellation ‘Springer’ in Millie’s case seems more than apt; spring-loaded is possibly nearer the mark. God only knows what she was crossed with because it seems George didn’t bother to find that out.
So there we are and, although I had never really given George much credit for forward thinking, he was definitely on the ball the day he shipped out. Oh, yes! He was well out of it him and his excuses. I can hear him now:
“I mean let’s face it, Jo, you were never there for me, always gadding about doing God knows what.”
“God knows what! Do you mean looking after the kids, cleaning the house, going to work, doing your accounts and looking out for my mother? While you were where? It’ll come to me in a minute. Oh, yes, you were having it off with fantastic Fran.”
“Oh there you go, sarcastic as ever. Let’s face it, Jo, apart from the kids, you and I just had nothing in common anymore.”
Of course we have a common denominator now, we both live with bitches; mine being Millie the four-legged variety; his being Fran.
Fran runs a Man Power Recruitment agency, George has a small building business which often needs to recruit short term labour. Fran had ‘business luncheoned’ George to within an inch of his life, promising discounted rates should he use her agency.
Now, it had been one thing George getting fat on all the business lunches Fran was providing, as well as being fed all the egotistical claptrap she was doling out, but bringing it home to me had been another matter. I did not want to hear it. He had stalked me with silly Fran sagas until I wanted to string him up.
The kettle would be boiling, the toast would be burning, the kids would be late for school and Josh would be unable to find his other trainer yet George would follow me around, prattling on about Fran starting up an agency for school leavers. I would be late for work. He would be hanging onto the open car door preventing me from moving off because he had forgotten to tell me that Fran, some years ago, had had the wit to save a man’s finger that had been severed with an electric saw so that it was able to be sewn back on.
It was Fran this and Fran that. Fran had impressed him with her A level in English Literature, told him she had read Shelley and Keats. I reminded him of my A Level in Art, but he said that didn’t count. One day I found him pouring over Google trying to find out who the hell Shelley and Keats were.
So it seemed Fran had been after my husband from the word go and he had been seduced by the attractions of her ‘company’ in more ways than one. There had been no point in confronting George, he hadn’t realised it yet, the subtly had eluded him. Of
course combine the intuition women possess in spadesful with a wife’s well-tuned antennae and it certainly hadn’t escaped me.
He had said it was time he changed his image. This was delusional, George had no image. Yet, the stuff which had constituted no image – Velcro fastening trainers, shell suits, anoraks – etc began filling quite a few black bags for charity while the trendy new gear which was to forge him an image replaced it on the empty shelves; all neatly piled in varying shades of blues and greys and all because Fran had told him blues and greys brought out the colour of his eyes. He began growing his hair longer because Fran had said he had a passing resemblance to Michael Hutchence. I said the resemblance was not so much passing as completely missed unless we were talking after Hutchence had hung himself, in which case, I could see where she was coming from. Instead of making his usual remark about sarcasm being the lowest form of wit, he had shook his head and walked away. It was clear Fran was making her presence felt;
Let’s face it, George. Why have a wife who is not aware of your existence unless there’s a spider in the bath or the grass needs cutting or the garden hose needs to be looped around that orange plastic thing on the back wall. Do not be told the grass is never greener on the other side. It is! Leave this life of drudgery to that simpleton you call your wife, she’s used to it. It could be her middle name. Joanne ‘Drudgery’ Charlton. It suits her, don’t you think? Has a certain ring to it.
Of course it goes without saying that I had been curious to meet this Fran, in fact, it had become something of an obsession. I had devised scenarios in my mind which usually took the form of finding the two of them in the usual compromising situation, whereupon I would stand over them, aloof, superior, and dignified while they grovel for their underwear and my forgiveness.
Of course it also goes without saying that the drama of the imagined scenarios bore absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the banal reality.
But, enough of that for now because today the kids and I had a doctor’s appointment to get to and as appointments in our house were never arrived at without some degree of underlying panic; this was no exception. I was up-ending cushions because my car keys had to be somewhere. I was trying to get the kids to get a move on; trying to make myself heard over the noise of Lucy singing, ‘Don’cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me’, into her karaoke and Josh shouting triumphantly over all the people he’d managed to kill with the control button of his Xbox, while at the same time listening to my mother who was talking to me through the phone which was jammed between my shoulder and my cheek.
“… and you will need to watch out for the buses when you’re out and about today, Joanne, because they’ve been painting them different colours. I mean why do we need Shocking Pink and Lime Green buses? What’s wrong with just red? The Number 21 is now Canary Yellow with palm trees up the doors and parrots fluttering around the outside of the top deck. It’s all very silly. Sadie said it’s like mounting a fairground ride. Anyway, Joanne, forewarned is forearmed…”
I’d hardly been on a bus in ten years.
“… Oh, and by the way, Joanne, if a bus driver with an odd looking eye comes to see you, don’t let him in. Oh, there’s the doorbell. I hope it isn’t those Jehovah’s Witnesses again. Like I told them last time, I have enough on my plate trying to keep up with the Catholic Church without taking anything else on. I’ll have to go, Joanne. Speak to you later, bye for now.”
And off she went leaving me to wonder why on earth a bus driver with a dodgy eye would be coming to see me.
My mother is eighty-three. Apart from me and the kids, God, her best friend Sadie and my ex George (who, it has to be said, she is still very fond of) my mother’s favourite people are Fiona Bruce, David Dimbleby, Alan Carr (as in, ‘Alan Carr-chattiman, was on Loose, Woman today, Joanne, such a pleasant boy’), Father McCaffrey from St. Augustine’s Church and Ant and Dec. Ant and Dec by virtue of the fact that Dec has a brother who is a priest.
Then the dog passed me, frothing at the mouth.
“Guess where I found these?” said Josh, jangling the car keys in my face. “They were only in the fruit bowl, innit.”
I took the keys. “Please don’t say innit, Josh, you do not live with gangsters.”
“There’s a tube of shower gel chewed to bits on the bathroom floor,” said Lucy, coming downstairs. So the dog didn’t have rabies. Just my luck. I grabbed the dog by the collar and pushed her into the kitchen. I filled her water bowl and I threw her a pig’s ear (there was a time when, if I thought of pig’s ears, which wasn’t often it has to be said, I just assumed they were to be found on a pig, yet now, I keep a supply of them, roasted, in my kitchen cupboards! Sometimes I wonder what my life has become). I gave the dog strict instructions to chew the pig’s ear and to leave the kitchen chair legs alone. Wishful thinking I know, but I live in hope.
I waited in the hall until the kids were sure they had all the technology they would need for a visit to a doctor’s surgery, then I herded them out of the front door and into the car and we set off.
I say set off, although that’s not strictly true because ten minutes later we were still on the drive, the car wouldn’t start.
I had turned the ignition key and got a high-pitched whining noise. I’d turned it again and got the same noise.
“You’ll flood the carburettor accelerating like that,” warned a man’s voice from over the front fence, “sounds to me like the battery’s flat.” I looked in the direction of the voice and saw a red face with a ginger beard and the body of a fading pink Camellia. “You’ll need to leave it for a few minutes, give it time to settle.”
I wound down the window, gave the man a smile of acknowledgement, took his advice and waited. Then from behind the fence the man nodded his indication for me to try the engine again. I did and with a bit of a splutter it grudgingly started up. The man started to move off but not before nodding his acknowledgment that this minor miracle was entirely down to his intervention.
I mouthed a thank you to God, made a mental ‘note-to-self’ (an expression picked up from my boss Ian which he accompanies with crooked fingers of exclamation marks), to remember to book the car in for a service with Mick the Mechanic; then we were off.
“Can I play One Direction?” asked Lucy, plugging in her MP3 player while ejecting Robbie Williams before I’d had time to answer, “and can we talk about my birthday please, because I’ve done sleepovers, pizzas and movies for the last three birthdays and this year I want something different?”
“How different?” I asked.
“A proper party with a DJ. I mean I will be fourteen!”
“Well if she’s having a party,” piped up Josh from the back seat, “I want a season ticket.”
“Well if he can have a season ticket, I can definitely have a party.”
“I haven’t said yes to anything yet. Where do you suppose I’d get money for all of that?” I asked.
“Well, Dad might cough it up, innit,” said Josh.
Cough! He’d probably choke on that, I thought.
Okay, so the house was mortgage free, courtesy of my father’s legacy, I had my part-time job in Human Resources, there was no problem with George and his child maintenance and he usually called every other Friday to give the kids pocket money or to take them bowling or to the pictures which was actually more than he had done when they all lived in the same house; it just never seemed enough.
“It’s a bit premature to be talking about your birthdays (there was exactly a year between Lucy and Josh), we’ve loads of time yet and please don’t say innit, Josh.”
“Well, she says, ‘talk to the hand’ and she gets away with that!”
“You are sooo juvenile, Josh,” said Lucy.
“Takes one to know one,” said Josh.
And on it went.
Now, although it might not be everyone’s idea
of a morning out, and sad as it may seem, I was actually quite looking forward to my visit to the doctor’s. Perhaps if I’d had something seriously wrong I might have had to rethink that, but, as it is, I pictured the scenario in my mind’s eye. I would sit between Lucy and Josh, first to keep them apart and second to inhibit some total stranger’s determination to regale me with their illness. I would flick through an out of date magazine to see which celeb had lost weight then put it on again, or I might just think the thoughts I usually don’t have the time to think.
2
DR WATSON, I PRESUME
Although the carburettor had flooded and the roadwork lights were against us and the traffic seemed busier than usual, probably due to half-term holidays, surprisingly, for us, we arrived at the surgery with some time to spare.
Beryl the receptionist looked up from her computer screen, mopped her face and the back of her neck with a tissue, mumbled something about ‘damned hot flushes’ and with a sigh asked us to take a seat. It seemed Dr Khan, who we were meant to see, had been called out to an emergency and, call me cynical, but Beryl’s sigh sounded suspiciously as though she was hoping our condition was serious enough to warrant the late finish which was obviously on the cards due to the backlog of patients now waiting to see the new locum: Dr Watson. This was the Dr Watson, who was responsible for turning my neighbour Janice, and most of her colleagues from the local bingo hall, into drooling hypochondriacs.
I looked around. The only empty seats were in the row that backed onto the back wall and which faced the rest of the waiting room. This was the row normally avoided by people who had an aversion to stage fright, but having no choice, I motioned to Lucy and Josh and the three of us sat down, divided from the rest of the waiting room by a magazine table and an arrangement of imitation plants.
My back itched. I sat on my hands trying to ignore the itching while wondering what I wouldn’t give for a coat hanger and some privacy when a little boy, sitting in a corner amongst a scattering of toys, pointed to the Fat Controller on a Thomas the Tank Engine picture and called out loudly to his mother, “Look Mam, it’s the fuckin’ troller.”
