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in the middle of collapsing tents. We didn’t lose any more girls, and I managed not to upset any more of them, which was just as well, as Melanie was up several times in the night with Mia having nightmares. Hopefully she won’t tell Mia’s parents that it was me who has caused her fears of the Nuclear Winter. Something has bitten me in an unspeakable place, though. I suspect the killer beetle.

      On arriving home with a grubby and sleep-deprived Jane, I was hopeful that Simon and Peter might have kept the home fires burning in my absence. I may lack Baden-Powell Spirit, but sometimes I am an incurable optimist. Sadly, my optimism was misplaced, as the house was a pit of fucking hell. I would go so far as to say squalid. I am not going to be an optimist anymore, I have decided, I am going to be a pessimist. It seems a much better idea. A pessimist will only ever either be proved right or pleasantly surprised – there is no disappointment lurking for pessimists the way there is for optimists.

      Simon was the picture of injured innocence as I shouted about why were there pants strewn in places that pants ought not to be, and no one had emptied the bin or flushed the bog, let alone removed the skidmarks or wiped the counters, and instead of putting away the clean dishes in the dishwasher to make room for the dirty ones, they had simply taken to piling the dirty dishes on the worktop above the dishwasher, waiting hopefully for the Magical Bastarding Dishwasher Fairy to wave her wand and furnish them with clean bowls.

      ‘What exactly have you done while I have been gone?’ I ranted. ‘And DON’T say “Looked after Peter”. He is hardly a baby that needs constant tending.’

      ‘Actually, darling,’ said Simon with irritating smugness, ‘I have cleaned out the fridge and sorted through the cupboards and thrown out everything that was out of date.’

      I went cold. ‘You have done what?’ I said in horror.

      I flung open the cupboards. All the spices – gone!

      ‘Some of them were two years out of date,’ said Simon indignantly.

      I whimpered.

      The cupboard full of posh rice and pasta and the token bag of quinoa, because middle-class – empty.

      ‘FOUR years!’ Simon informed me. ‘The quinoa was four years out of date! It hadn’t even been opened! And the risotto rice expired last month, and the red carmargue rice was two months out of date, and there was a packet of funny shaped pasta that went off six months ago. And there was a tin of spaghetti hoops that was SIX years out of date!’

      ‘These things don’t go off,’ I said furiously. ‘Spices are MEANT to be out of date! Nobody has in-date spices, the people who say you should throw them out after six months are just trying to trick you. When they start tasting like dust is when they are getting GOOD. And pasta and rice are clearly edible for months after the arbitrary date on the packet and now I will have to waste money buying more quinoa for no one to eat, because if we have no quinoa in the cupboard are we even middle-class? And tinned stuff NEVER goes bad. NEVER! That is why people hoard tins for after the nuclear apocalypse. If there is a nuclear apocalypse tonight, we needn’t bother trying to survive, because we will all starve anyway because YOU THREW OUT MY EMERGENCY SPAGHETTI HOOPS!’

      ‘I think you’re over-reacting again, darling.’ smirked Simon. ‘Look in the fridge.’

      I opened the fridge. No jam. No ketchup. No mayonnaise. Not a single vegetable. The three tubs of antiquated houmous that were looking increasingly menacing and I was actually quite scared to touch had also vanished, which was something.

      ‘All out of date,’ beamed Simon.

      ‘The potatoes?’

      ‘Out of date yesterday.’

      ‘Carrots, onions, garlic?’

      ‘Gone, gone, gone!’

      ‘But there was nothing wrong with them. Unless they are actually sprouting, going green or decomposing, they are absolutely fine.’

      ‘Out of date! Out of date!’ insisted Simon. ‘They had to go.’

      ‘FML,’ I muttered. ‘Well, I suppose we’re getting a takeaway for dinner, then. And where is the ham? That wasn’t out of date.’

      ‘No, but it said eat within two days of opening and it had been open for more than two days, so out it went.’

      ‘FFS!’ I said. ‘Literally NO ONE pays any attention to that. NO ONE! I am going to have a shower and scrape off field residue, and you can go to Sainsbury’s and BUY SOME FUCKING FOOD.’

      ‘But I’ve been busy sorting all this out and looking after Peter all weekend! Even though, really, sorting out the fridge and cupboards should be your job, now you’re not working, but I did it for you anyway.’ protested Simon. ‘Can’t you pop to the shop?’

      ‘Firstly, I AM working, I am trying to build myself a new career, I’m hardly sitting around reading magazines and eating bonbons all day like a lady of leisure,’ (this might be a slight lie, obviously) ‘so I don’t know where you get the idea that everything in the house is now my responsibility. Secondly, I HAVE BEEN SLEEPING IN A FUCKING FIELD AND BEEN TORMENTED BY BEETLES AND RISKED MY LIFE WITH A VERY DANGEROUS GAS STOVE IN ORDER TO CREATE WONDERFUL CHILDHOOD MEMORIES FOR YOUR DAUGHTER, WHILE YOU THREW OUT VAST QUANTITIES OF PERFECTLY GOOD FOOD!’ I roared. ‘YOU go to the bastarding shop!’

      Simon went to the shop. He came home chuntering in outrage at the iniquitous price of food, which frankly serves him right for throwing everything out. How marvellous it is to be home. I have several weeks more of such fun to look forward to.

      Wednesday, 10 August

      Today, lacking any other inspiration for something to do with my darling children, we went to the park. I hate the park. The park is where mummies go when their precious moppets have driven them so fucking mad that they now need to be in the presence of witnesses to stop them doing something they regret. Sometimes I wonder about trying to tot up all the hours I have spent in cold, draughty parks since the children were born, but frankly it is too depressing. Also, everyone witters on at you about the dangers of getting piles in pregnancy, but no one, not one single fucker, ever tells you that actually you are more likely to get piles from the hours upon hours upon hours you will now spend sitting on a chilly, damp park bench. Still, at least it is summer, so the risk of piles and chilblains is slightly diminished.

      I cannot enter the hallowed portals of the actual play park because I brought the dog with me, so we lurk outside while toddlers’ mummies glare at us in case we make a break for the gate so Judgy can do a shit in the sandpit and I can rub it in their cherub’s eye and BLIND THEM FOR EVER! Obviously, I know dog poo can be very dangerous, and of course I don’t condone people who let their dogs crap in children’s play parks. I just resent the hisses of horror from the mummies whenever a dog ventures within a hundred feet of the gate. Luckily, Peter and Jane are now old enough that they don’t need close supervision in the park anymore. Peter is perfectly capable of trying to break a limb on the monkey bars all by himself, and Jane is more interested in taking selfies with Sophie on the old iPhone she cajoled out of me and now insists on taking everywhere with her despite me pointing out that she doesn’t actually need a phone at the park.

      While the children played, I had a quick look through my emails, where there was nothing of much interest – another Nigerian general just needed my bank account details to transfer his millions (I wonder if I could invent an app that somehow spams back the spammers?), Gap had another sale (when does Gap not have a sale? Does anyone ever buy anything full price in Gap? Maybe I could make an app for Gap, for all their sales. Oh, they already have one. Bugger), and one more email from the recruitment company I had signed up for. I almost deleted the recruitment company’s email, as despite carefully filling in the forms telling them my qualifications, my interests, the fields I wished to work in and the salary I was looking for, so far they had sent a steady stream of jobs that were nothing to do with my expertise, were located five hundred miles away and paid approximately a third of what I previously earned. However, mainly so I could look like I was doing something important – and thus avoid catching

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