The trials and tribulations of a would be Yummie

....who would much prefer to stay in last week’s jeans and watch bugs!
So there am I on a glorious sunny Sunday afternoon hoovering all the dog hairs out of my decrepit Landrover Discovery. I have a 4x4 and I am proud of it – it is now a teenager, it rusts and the only reason I drive it is so that I can peer regally out of it into my neighbours’ front rooms. And as Roger kindly reminds me it was free.
So my whole argument for driving this gas guzzling, rust bucket is that I prefer to view life from the top and that I didn’t have to pay for it – well quite!
On that basis why the heck am I so concerned about its appearance? Well it’s the start of the school term! Obvious isn’t it. I’m supposed to be a Yummy Mummy. Everyone’s cars are immaculate – it does help that they are actually brand new while mine has been ‘off’ and well passed its sell by date for years. So I clean it internally, then set about washing, buffing and polishing it on the outside, knowing full well that as soon as I finish the chickens will be gallivanting along the top of it and sliding down the windscreen ‘cos it’s fun, the turtle dove in the barn will decide that going outside is far to much of a bother and knows I will understand because it has got eggs and really can’t be forced outside - not now!
Dust will blow and to be honest anyone looking at her from the outside will never know or even comprehend the time spent trying to get her up to mustard just for a school run at sparrow’s fart on Monday morning.
Luckily for me the school run is put off for 24 hours as The Boy is violently ill all over my antique black and pink paisley eiderdown (a family heirloom and one I have coveted for many years. Just my luck that as soon as I get my sticky paws on it that that would happen.)
Tuesday dawns: now I am concerned about my apparel; however with a raging temperature and slightly high on The Boy’s Calpol I toss these societal bagatelles to one side and am deliberately late to school thus avoiding condemnation – but that is not the way to carry on and sooner or later the inevitable will have to be faced.
So today I find myself sniffing my clothes – a sure fire freshness test because frankly I do not want to have to go to the bother of having to wear clean jeans or a brand new clean shirt if I can possibly avoid it, but guilt, horror, peer pressure prevails and I land up changing three times and going up and down stairs so many times to change my shoes that I feel like a Jack in the box and all before 7am!
I do not go as far as plying myself with makeup, doing my nails or bouffing up my hair - come on I am not a professional after all. So semi clean car – cos the dog did land up being sick in it after my meandering return the previous day and I haven’t quite got round to clearing it out – semi clean me, one Boy and one baby and a small terrorist who has promised not to be sick. We set off in good time to enter the fray.
The school is some 15 miles away set in beautifully manicured grounds; huge oaks to climb in, fabulous area to get lost in and all safe – after all THAT is why we pay for it. And then there is the long sylvan drive to the car park where all the other Yummy Mummies are present and correct – and try as I might I am always late and it is always chaos for us. We have to drive past all the other Yummies perched in their fabulous, glistening, clean Range Rovers, VWs, Audis, Mercedes, donned head to toe in Boden/Gap/LK Bennet splendour. Beautifully accessorised. And am I jealous? Am I envious? – For a minute YOU BET! Then to be honest I think hard about what I have done to get here and do I really care? No ‘cos it’s much too much like hard work and my biggest thrill of the day, outside my boys, was finding a newly hatched Holly Blue in the garden. Its wings iridescent blue in the sunlight and I marvelled at it. So delicate, so perfect - something I will never be and frankly just can’t be bothered to be but there is still that niggling doubt that I should be…so I will change umpteen times, clean the car and try and try to be grown up like the rest of them. It’s all a bit Stepford isn’t it?