Mid-Life Crisis

by T. Jessop

  Has the world gone mad? The kids have always liked the fact they have quite trendy parents, they have always said how their mates think were cool (all kids think other people’s mums and dads are cooler than their own); still, this explains why our house is always full of 17‒20-year-olds poncing dinner. Then tonight all hell broke loose as one of Tony’s friends dropped a clanger by remarking that I was a MILF? I didn’t have a clue what one of them was.

  Tony flipped and told him to get out and that he was now barred from the house, whilst relaying that the guy is to never speak to me again. Then Tony turns on me saying, ‘Maybe, Mum, you should tone things down a bit and do not speak to any of my mates again.’ I haven’t got a clue what’s happened. What I did know was he’s a funny guy. (1)Whose name is on the mortgage deeds? Oh yeah, that’ll be me, so sod off round their houses. And (2)don’t ever call us parents paranoid and controlling again.

  Guessing it had to be some sort of a derogatory remark I texted Julie, the font of all filth, for an explanation. I was quite flattered when she told me what it stood for; don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. Julie then asked me for the guy’s number as, not having kids herself, she don’t see a nineteen-year-old and think ‘Oh, I’m old enough to be his mother’; rather, she sees him as fresh meat. Mate, she has no scruples.

  After ten minutes of Tony and his mates going on about friendship, loyalty and respect I got in the car to go get some fags when I noticed the note under my windscreen wiper with a number and ‘Call me’, lol. Whole episode made my day if I’m honest. So what, the comment was vulgar; it was definitely a compliment and most of us haven’t heard bullshit like that since we were teenagers. Well, with the exception of Julie that is.

  Definitely had too much to drink, yet again. Dunno about mid-life crisis but I’m beginning to think I have a drink problem.

  Positives: Alcohol.

  Negatives: Alcohol.

  Wednesday 4th January 2014

  Hairdresser coming at five.

  Marie got the pleasure of dropping off her younger sisters at the airport at seven this morning as Molly and Baby head off to stay with their dad in sunny California. Now ensues Chris loitering with too much time on her hands. Oh joy!

  Somebody hates me!

  New forerunner for depression, MLC has flagged in the shadow of a sinister cloud: I have been diagnosed with alopecia. WTF! Even writing the word makes me want cry, not that I’ve stopped crying yet. Am I being punished for laughing at men in wigs, or gloating about being a MILF? Baldy Day or B-Day as it will forever be known, as the day that froze my soul.

  Having not been badgered by Chris I thought I’d do my hair, so at eleven this morning I’m sat in front of the mirror. I had just finished straightening it when I ran my fingers through and lifted it away from my eyes, and there it was. My heart stopped: it looked like someone had shaved a chunk clean off. After the sick feeling passed which felt like an eternity I searched my pillow, hoping to find evidence of foul play. I didn’t. I then sat in silence for fifteen minutes trying to convince myself I’d burnt it off with the straighteners. That wasn’t working so I texted Joe and the kids and begged them to confess one of them had done it for a dare while I slept, anything. But no.

  I rang the doctors and by the time I was due to be there I’d convinced myself I’d over-dyed it and the prolonged use of straighteners had caused brittle hair that had simply broken off. The doctor calmly took one look at my head and uttered the immortal words ‘alopecia Areata’, followed by, ‘You want to hope it’s not the other one. If it is, all your hair will be gone within six weeks.’ I thanked him for his kind words, got five steps out the surgery and broke down. I know in my heart I should be grateful it wasn’t something more sinister, and that vanity is a sin, but for fuck’s sake. Yeah, I said it. Forget about me, but what about my family? How embarrassing for them. I texted them and got varied responses. All included ‘we still love you’. Bloody hell, people, I’m going bald, not mutating. Then there was some flannel about ‘We’ll shave ours off for ya’ .Yeah, great, we’ll all look like dicks, shall we? (Incidentally that offer was withdrawn twenty minutes later.)

  Had to ring the hairdresser and cancel tonight’s appointment.

  Andy and Jessica did a diversion on the way back from Devon and took the kids to the zoo, so by the time we saw them tonight Connor could barely find the energy to open his presents. But Connor in true form mustered what reserves he had to enquire, ‘What’s a spam head?’

  Note to self: Slap Tony in the mouth.

  I’m now going to bed, hoping tomorrow when I awake I’ll find this was all a bad dream, or at least wake up and not find more hair gone.

  Positives: Saved money on haircut.

  Negatives: Seriously!

  Thursday 5th January 2014

  Julie dinner 6pm.

  Plumber 11am‒5pm.

  Aftershock of B-Day, thank God the patch is no bigger. Chris popped in for a coffee and upon hearing the news about my hair sat no nearer to me than 4foot at any given moment. I got a number for a Harley Street hair clinic and spoke to a very nice man who reassured me that my hair will grow back and I probably won’t get any more patches, so feeling a tad calmer I searched the net for more information and sadly discovered the reality of this condition is unknown: what will happen how or when. Coupled with pictures I soon realised how lucky I am to have only a small patch. Very humbling.

  Also, as stress is believed to be a contributing factor, I’ve made the decision to accept this condition and keep calm. Great start when Joe said if the patch doesn’t re-grow I should have little rabbits tattooed on it… cos from a distance they’ll look like hares. Bastard!

  Jessica popped by this afternoon after picking Daisy up from nursery. Daisy kept fidgeting and scratching her crotch, Chris left in a panic convinced that Daisy has lice (she was already shaken that alopecia might be hereditary).On further investigation into daisy’s drawers I found and removed a chunk of blue tinsel to which Daisy squealed, ‘It’s for you, Nanny, I puts it there cos I got no pockets. ‘I relayed this to Julie at dinner and she reckons Daisy has got good clubbing potential as she herself has been known to place her mobile in the very same place when out. Really? Wouldn’t have thought the safest place was in her underwear with the amount of comings and goings on in them. Excuse the pun.

  Plumber eventually turned up at seven, new toilet fitted and I’m £200 lighter.

  Need to wash hair.

  Need the courage to wash hair.

  Friday 6th January 2014

  Hairdresser 5pm.

  Girls’ night at Chris’s.

  Day 3 after B-Day. Never been so terrified as I had to wash my hair this morning. The best solution I felt was to keep both eyes firmly shut ‒I had no need to see what falls into the bath, thanks‒ and tried not to shake in my boots when I cleaned out the hairbrush. Think it went well. Then Joe got up after I’d finished, went to clean his teeth, he didn’t see the cat asleep under the sink, trod on her tail, she screeched, he screamed (said he didn’t),lifted his leg so quickly when he jumped he has dislodged the sink from the wall. Plumber coming back Tuesday. My husband should come with a warning.

  On top of that Chris dragged me round B&Q for two hours as she wants to decorate the girls’ room while they’re away. Well, that was her excuse. I think she wanted to tell me that Penny had been for a pregnancy test this morning, and although the results were negative Chris still enjoyed the gossip. Sad really.

  Braved keeping my hair appointment tonight. We talked about anything and everything except baldness, which somehow led me to ask at what age do we women get a blue rinse. Speaking from her experience Carol reckons it’s around the seventy-two mark. Shampoo and set starts around seventy, then they get lairy and go for colour. She can’t confirm when the wearing of polyester trousers begins, to be worn with the waistband under the armpits. Rain Mac in pink or b
lue? That probably depends on the colour chosen for the hair, lol.

  Much-needed night out and alcohol round Chris’s. Everyone was on strict orders beforehand not to mention ‘the hair’; it was a good hour I had to endure them staring at my head. We ended up talking about old people and their hair again. Weebles are not my favourite subject. Missed Julie being there as she had flown out to Paris with Charles.

  Positives: Eyelids.

  Negatives: Joe and plumbing.

  Saturday 7th January 2014

  Poker night.

  Having relayed the conversation about old people’s hair last night we’d moved on to what they wear, so this morning several of us went scouring the shops to root out granny clobber. We all see what they wear but never see these articles for sale in shops. The wasted search has led us to unanimously agree that as we found nothing, there must be a little shop in the back of beyond who has the birth records of the British Empire and when someone nears the secret age they receive a ‘self-destructing’ letter directing them to granny clothing. Further discussion has also brought on the opinion that a similar shop must exist for gay men to purchase them really thick bushy moustaches as they can’t be real. Gotta be ‘stick on’: if they were real, how come straight guys can’t seem to grow one, eh? Penny joked that if at forty-odd comes the MLC, at what age should we expect to start smelling of cabbage?

  Note to self: Monday go to solicitors and state in will: at first whiff of rotting vegetables mine are to bop me off. Pissy knickers totally acceptable. Er, I wonder if this is why there have been many cases of self-combustion amongst old peeps? Overload of methane, lol. No, not lol. Whole idea of combusting scares me.

  Not sure if it’s desperation or blind panic: as I have the house to myself tonight I’ve been surfing the internet for more information on mid-life crisis (better that than alopecia) and what I have discovered is there appears to be a different set of rules for the sexes in a MLC. It’s not good for the gander, but very good for the goose. Man has a crisis: he buys a flashy new car, starts dressing like a twenty-something and hooks up with some floozy half his age, egged on and admired by other men. Women: with exception of a few, are in turmoil, riddled with guilt, stuck in the throes of misery, seemingly more concerned they may inflict shame and embarrassment on those closest to them by parading around like a teenager. This, however, may explain those boots I bought last week: black, slinky, high-heeled, knee-length. God, this also explains why the shop assistant gave me that face. The face that said ‘Mutton’. Shame on me, lol. Worse still was when the kids saw them and amongst their laughter demanded to know ‘Whose are the stripper boots?’Riddled with shame I replied, ‘Julie’s’. Lucky for me she’s still in Paris with Charles, or she’d have defiantly grassed me up. Small mercy on both our parts that I didn’t give into the craving to buy that red skimpy dress in Morton’s.

  Sunday 8th January 2014

  Sunday market.

  Very strange! I cooked a perfect roast today, or so I thought. Everything looked perfect until I bit into a roast potato. I can’t describe what it tasted like; Joe agreed it was more of a physical response than a flavour, declaring it made his mouth screw up like an arsehole. Still, he ate them though. But given my run of luck at the moment I did not. Weird?

  This evening I’ve found myself feeling quite weepy again and wishing Granddad was still here; he’d make me feel better. I owe almost everything to the advice and wisdom passed onto me from my grandparents. I remember the look on Granddad’s face when I asked him if he was gonna get himself one of them golf cart things: ‘They’re for lazy bastards and old people’ was the response. Element of truth in that, I believe. Retirement didn’t stop him from getting up early, walk to the shop to get his newspapers, do a bit of gardening and outdoor work for a local factory; that’s what he meant by lazy, get idle and waste away. Same applies to Nan: she’s never stopped. Before Granddad died she was always visiting people in hospital. What shocked me was she didn’t know half of them, but as they had no family of their own she would visit them, buy them magazines and chat. Thus came my phobia of Ribena, as I was taken on so many of these Samaritan visits and was forced to drink it as every patient had a bottle of the bleeding stuff. Gross. Once they were discharged, Nan would visit them at home too, helping out with housework or ironing. She told me it was because‘ They’re old’: I found out she was actually ten years older than most of them.

  So, old peeps’ buggies? To be fair they are a brilliant invention, giving freedom and independence to people who generally need help getting about. These ones we recognise because they drive with consideration and care, not the ones who will mow down anyone from a embryo upwards on public paths; bet these are the same miserable arseholes who forced the law for cyclists to ride on roads. Ironically, 99% of cyclists of all ages I’ve encountered on a path have slowed down or stop to let you pass; I’ve never had one honk like a maniac, speed up or verbally attack me. Clue’s in the title, people: footpath. In my day of pram pushing I never expected anyone to hold open doors for me, was always grateful when someone did offer; wielding a pram never gave me the right to jump queues, cross roads without looking, and I certainly never bombed down supermarket aisles knocking over displays and small children.

  With the exception of a few, like my grandparents, ‘old people’: nope, don’t like them. And when all the good ones have passed away, with them will go the contents of the ‘survival kit’ handbag. Nan’s bag contains everything you’d need in an emergency: knicker elastic with threader (stirring sticks pilfered from cafes), bar of soap (pinched from hotel in Benidorm), never-ending tissues, pens, shoelace, mini sewing kit, screwdriver, tweezers, safety pins, teaspoon, headscarf that always smells like face powder, crepe bandage, plasters, painkillers, coupons carefully cut from magazines they always forgot to trade in. Newspaper clippings from 1952. Packet of seeds. Endless.

  My personal favourite are the boiled sweets that lurk in the abyss for centuries and when you try and unwrap them you can’t tell which is cellophane or sweet as they’ve merged over time as one, so then you have to suck it, picking plastic off your tongue as you go along. There was, however, one item in the handbag that would send a ripple of dread through every child: the rolled-up plastic see-through bonnet. I used to start crying as the first raindrop fell. For me there was the added bonus that if there was more than a drizzle, my Nan has a rolled up matching Mac. I’ve never seen Nan with a cook book; nah, it’s all from memory ‒ and given some of the weird concoctions she’s fed us it’s probably better that we didn’t know the ingredients. They tasted nice, and ignorance is bliss so they say. I was always impressed with her winter soup: eat canned crap and half an hour later your stomach thinks your throat’s been cut; Nan’s would fill you up even without bread and was available anytime, night or day. What I didn’t know back then was it is a soup that gets topped up over a couple of months, use-by dates not applicable then.

  We would get told off for climbing trees or scrumping, until it was jamming season: then we got sent up cherry trees and told to raid the orchards. Being scared of the dark was unacceptable in any grandparents’ eyes; truth behind that was, good or bad, all old people are to bloody tight to leave a light on all night. Pointless to complain if it was cold in their house: hell would freeze over before they’d put the fire on; the best we got was for them to put on the illusionary flame effect to which they would say ‘That’s better’. Mind you, they also said don’t paint a room blue as it makes it colder, and I’ve found that to be true. Old people confused the shit out of us little kids: ‘Take your coat off, you won’t feel the benefit. ‘Do you need the toilet? No? Well, go anyway.’

  If someone asked Nan what time the bus came at the top of our street, she could recite the entire schedule off by heart. Why, then, was she always running for the bus, dragging me so fast my feet dangled behind, thus causing my little legs to be tired, and then once on the bus why, if it was crowded, did
she make me stand up so someone else could sit down? Then on arrival at the destination would whip out an old hanky, give it a lick, then wipe your face then force you to blow your nose then check each nostril to be sure you had no bats in the cave.

  You were a big girl’s blouse if you cried: told us our cut knees didn’t hurt when they clearly did. Back-chatting was a criminal offence, yet in the next breath told us to stand up for ourselves. I’ve pulled many a face into the changing wind and it never stayed that way. Where’s all the wool they accused me of pulling over their eyes?

  Lol, good memories. Feel much better. Looking forward to bed.

  Confession: Did buy that red skimpy dress in Morton’s. xx

  Monday 9th January 2014

  Joe football.

  Shopping.

  Got up this morning feeling quite perky and with the kids at their dad’s Chris is starting the decorating in their bedroom today, thus leaving me in peace for a while. Bonus xx

  Called Elizabeth: she’s been to some LIFE seminar, paid real money for some ponce to make her feel like she was inadequate and weak. As one of her closest friends I assured her we can do that for her and it wouldn’t cost her a penny.

  Tony and his mates have gone for a takeaway tonight; Leigh’s gone to a club and Joe’s at football, so I have total peace and quiet for at least ten minutes this evening. Lovely. xx

  Bored, bored, having paced the house looking for something to do I opted for raiding the fridge and have just consumed one and a half boxes of chocolate fingers. Feeling rather green around the gills. xx

  Speaking of fingers, people claim to see many things in vomit that they don’t remember eating but nobody notices the finger that lurks in the cold sick that as soon as you go to clean it up the skin that’s formed on top breaks, releasing the digit which shoots straight down your throat, making you gag.