Mavis and Sue.

Oh it’s a funny old life. Two month’s after Mark left,  Kath’s  husband  packed up his little  suitcase and  disappeared  off into  the yonder  after him.

All of a sudden we were  single Mummies, and I went from feeling like the most deserted woman on the planet to   feeling like I had  a partner in crime on the verge of a big adventure… 

So ok it’s hardly an adventure and there have been far too many nights sat sobbing together over a bag of crisps we were passing off as a meal, but it has been, dare I say it, so much easier for knowing that there is a person on the end of the phone who feels exactly the same as I do in the middle of the night when the whole house seems colder than it used to be…

Hormones compromise our sanity. We take turns alternatively being strong and weeping all over our matching Laura Ashley rugs. We moan about the kids because we are their Mums and it is our perogative. We dream of January when they will toddle off to afternoon daycare on a daily basis while we get hyper on super strong coffee. And above all else we analyse every daft thing our ex partners say and declare ourselves well rid… 

Of course we are not the same. We have each handled the shock that is sudden desertion in our own way. Kath is dignified. Quietly and oh so justifiably disgusted with her husbands behavior. Given to cooking portions of food to leave on my doorstep, and tidying her wardrobe at two o’clock in the morning. I talk too much. Fall apart a bit. Tell the world everything I think and feel. Make friends with Mark and fall dramatically, stupid in love with someone else…

We hate Saturdays.  Saturdays are Daddy days and all of a sudden we are surplus to requirements. Not welcome on the weekly visits to the pictures, or the park, or indeed on the obligatory visits to McDonalds. So instead we entertain ourselves.

We eat vats of popcorn in the cinema watching bad films Kath must take responsibilty for. We trail around Marks and Spencers choosing organic banana’s and worrying about whether there will be any parma ham left on the shelves. We drink more coffee than is necessary and debate the merits of drinking red wine in the afternoons. We giggle. We moan. We cry. And sometimes like today we nearly fall into our shopping trolleys laughing.

We are Waitrose girls. But she makes me do bad things. And today doing bad things meant venturing into the hellhole that is Aldi (strange, cheap, European supermarket) and leaving our snobbery at the door. Getting excited about foriegn looking biscuits, and vanilla brioche. Talking ourselves into boxes of dodgy dark chocolates and buying terrible bottles of rioja because it is wrapped in gold net and therefore by  anyones standards, just about  as posh as Aldi will ever get. And then I went too far.   In a kind of curiously dippy moment I  stroked a pair of velour jimjams stacked rather winningly next to the oranges and dear Kath nearly marched me out of the shop. But not before I made her put a bag of prawns back. Cheap prawns could kill a person Missus! But nobody ever died of bad taste in pyjamas…

Then it was a quick dash through the rain to a snuggly pub with coal fires, a shared plate of antipasti, and some twinkly fairy lights that brought on a migraine that left Kath blind, and me in charge of her gigantic 4×4.  Oh it was hideous.  I drove through torrential rain in the darkest dark, while Kath kept her hands over her eyes and we both  sat hunched in the front of the car like a decrepid Thelma  and Louise, screaming laughing  and quite plainly scared stiff.

Now I am here.And she is fifteen doors down the road. The babba’s are in bed, and although on nights like tonight it feels as if the whole world is out having a good time, there is something super snuggly about eating bad chocolate with Casualty and a pile of magazine’s and knowing that within two minutes either of us could be at the others, baby in a sleeping bag and  parallel worlds colliding so we never have to feel alone.

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