Just not today.
The box labelled ‘first morning’ is missing and all I can see are ones labelled ‘shoes.’
In the story of my life, shoes take up a whole chapter. This is because I am hopeless with actual clothes but nobody can mess up buying shoes, right?
Shoes used to take up all the space in the bottom of my wardrobe in our old house.
Organising them has always been the problem.
I thought about lining them up in boxes with Polaroid photos on the outsides but really ... Who does that?
So today, my many shoes are clogging up the landing in ten giant boxes and there is no sign of the vital ‘first morning’ box.
You are hopeless,says Mildred.
Yeah, yeah, I tell her. Enough already.
With a mere two days to go to the actual moving truck turning up, my younger sister Scarlett asked: ‘Have you done lists for every box, so you know what’s in them all?’
I gave her myseriously?face.
‘Do I look like I have time to do lists of what’s in every damn box?’ I said waspishly. I was also considering the fact that I would never, ever be able to buy a pair of shoes again. Yes, we will bethatbroke from buying this house.
‘I am too busy to do lists because I am overseeing things. Did you know that Teddy is unpacking her toy boxes even when Iduct-tape them shut.’
‘Respect,’ laughed Scarlett. ‘Ican’t open things shut with duct tape.’
Scarlett does not have children – a source of much pain, I should add – which is why she is impressed with the thingsfour-year-olds can do that their mothers do not want them to do.
It is a mark of what an amazing human being Scarlett is that after years of infertility treatment, she can even be in the same house as a child. She has taken every hormone known to woman, still has no little beloved baba to show for it, and yet still takes care of my children all the time.
Today, my fabulous childminder, Angela, has had to have a tooth out, so my afternoon help is absent.
I continue my rant, albeit calmer: ‘Dan has gone off to do an interview, when I’ve cancelled all work for four days so we can get sorted. Lexi has done her boxes and wants me to take her and her friend to the cinema, as a last treat in this house, which is not happening.’
Instantly, mothering guilt rages up in me.
You can tell me that guilt is a wasted emotion and I know it is, but I still let it have its way with me. The same way I feel bad when I eat huge slices of cake on shoots for the cake bit of my books, even though Ihaveto. All part of the job.
Guilt is part of living, although I’ve bought severalself-help books on the basis that they can help me banish it.
‘Plus,’ I continue, ‘Liam is spending far too long every evening playing Super Mario on the Super Mario yoke because I promised it was the last thing I’d put away. Dan should be here.’
‘Naughty Dan,’ says Scarlett, grinning.
She loves Dan. All my family do. Con, annoying little brother, teases me that because Dan is younger than me – three years younger – he is infinitely cooler.
Which is true. Dan is the economist everyone wants on their TV and radio shows.
And in truth, everyone is cooler than me.
‘Don’t stand up for him,’ I say crossly. ‘I can’t do everything myself and I’m running out of time.’
At that point, I was at thebasically-throwing-things-?into-the-cardbox-box stage of moving. Even my beloved shoes, which I had planned to pack like Michelangelo artefacts in tissue paper, were being jammed into boxeswilly-nilly.
You should have planned this.
Yeah, well, theOprahpeople should have called by now, Mildred, but that isn’t happening, either.
