I had to go to the local shop to get a packet of tampax. To avoid theft and to torture customers, small shops in Ireland keep tampax behind the counter. I looked at the crowded shop and thought “I am 37 years old, I have given birth to three children, I can surely ask for a packet of tampax without undue embarrassment”. I came to the top of the queue and faced the Chinese man behind the counter. Two elderly men in flat caps stood patiently behind me.
Me: Could I have a packet of tampax please?
Him: Sorry?
Me: A packet of tampax.
Him: What for?
Me: Sorry??
Men behind me in queue: Cough, cough.
Him: What it for?
Me: Um.
Him (enlightenment dawning): Ah, sorry. Small, medium or large? (I love that question).
Me: Medium.
Him (triumphantly smacking a packet of thumbtacks on the counter): Here you go.
The clue is in the title. She’s a GP and a mama. Her daughter is very like mine to my great amusement. In fact, in many ways, her life sounds like mine, except of course, that she is a doctor bringing joy and good health to humanity and I am a worker drone thinking up performance indicators and writing annual reports. As well as writing about her children, she does the odd post about seeing things from the GP’s side of the desk and this is all very interesting. Let me give you a tip, if your doctor has a bad cold don’t say “Doctor, you should be the one taking antibiotics”. Apparently, though she will laugh politely, it palls after a while and, anyway, she will be itching to tell you a cold is a virus.
When I started posting at 20six, I instantly noticed that there was someone who seemed incredibly popular. Who was this pog anyway? I started to lurk on her site. She was a London party girl, that’s who she was. I started to enjoy a glitzy social life involving all night parties in cool London locations as well as a day job in something mediaish and exciting (though she was rather dismissive about this latter). It was another world. A lot of the blogs I read are more of the same world; I like that, it’s nice to be reassured that you are not alone and it’s entertaining to find others in the same boat as you but pog is a completely different world and I like that too. As it turns out, the cool girl has a heart of gold and now regularly reads my blog (can I tell you how excited I was the first time she left a comment?), which I hope will mean that she will keep up with the partying rather than settle down to produce kiddies in the short term. The cool girl is also a cook and when I was unable to eat anything in the later stages of my last pregnancy, sent me recipes artfully combining the few things I could eat. She also made bread from scratch. Including the yeast which she described as heaving in her kitchen in a large vat. What else can I say?
laughing. laughing. laughing.
So, there I was splurging coffee all over my PC at ‘the packet of thumbtacks’ when I found – well – me! Me? Glitzy social life? Media’ish job? My – those were t’ days, ay? Today I have been mostly trying not to snarl at ill-informed and not-at-all-well-meaning people who have been cocking up most of what I did last week. I’ve just about succeeded in not swearing – well, not in their hearing, anyway. Oh – and I have been reduced to leaving begging messages on the voicemail of my elusive electrician – and clearly sounded so bereft when I managed to track down his sidekick, the plumber, that the plumber is now chasing the sparks for me.
Oh yes. Dead glitzy. That’s my life.
(Arf.)
That’s brilliant – French and Saunders couldn’t have written a better sketch.
Thank you for my review btw x