The mother

Posted by Katy Regan at 14:51 on 15 Jan 2010

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I've started to talk to myself. It's quite worrying. I remember my mum used to talk to herself. I'd be about ten years old, playing with my Fisher Price Treehouse in the lounge whilst my mother muttered away to herself about what she needed from Asda, in the kitchen.

"Mum! Stop talking to yourself. You sound like a nutter," I'd shout at her.

"Oh? Was I talking to myself?" she'd say, vaguely, totally oblivious. In my head, she was about sixty at the time. Ancient and therefore it was not surprising she was going senile. In reality she was 35. My age. And now the same fate has befallen me.

I've been caught three times this week already; once by a friend, once by myself (I was talking to myself whilst drying my hair in the mirror) and once by Egg. And it's all been about the same thing.

"Are you talking to yourself?" Egg asked, as he was getting out of our (shared) car and I was getting out of the passenger seat.

"No! Don't talk nonsense."

"You were," he laughed, "with facial expressions too. You looked all angry".

This is the thing. It's not just ordinary talking to myself but animated, too. Telling an imaginary person off. Occasional gesticulations. Some swearing. It's basically mime but my mouth moves. It seems to happen when I'm angry about something. And I've realised it's because I am angry about THE mother .

"What were you thinking about?" said Egg
"Oh THE mother."
"You could tell, your face was all screwed up."

Oh, I'm not going to go into detail about the mother (that would be petty, wouldn't it? And silly and I'm not going to get all silly about it) But I will tell you that I've had a bit of a run in with a mother from school who... I was shocked, readers, shocked... has refused to let her child have a play-date with mine! (Oh dear, seem to have gone into detail.)

I'm actually quite hurt - on F's behalf if nothing else - since he asks every day when her child can come and play. She seems to think her child and mine are a nightmare together. (Reading between the lines, I think she just thinks MY child is a nightmare.)

What I deem as normal five-year-old boy behaviour: i.e. wrestling one another to the ground, throwing snowballs, basically being a hyperactive 'challenge' (an adorable one, such an adorable one) for most of their waking hours, she deems as 'not playing nicely together'.

"I don't think they can play together until they learn to play nicely," she said when I asked if her child could come to play at ours. But how do children learn to play nicely unless you let them play together at all?

"I know Fergus can be pretty boisterous," I said (cue sisterly camaraderie along the lines of, "Oh don't worry XX is too!" But no, she said, "Really? XX is fine on his own."

So there we have it. My paranoia is completely founded. She thinks her child is being corrupted by mine and that's why they can't play together. She thinks my child is a nightmare

Well, I know it's silly and I said I'd never get into all this playground politics nonsense but I'm quite upset, since F is a totally normal, lovely, affectionate child (I'm not biased of course) who drives me up the wall sometimes and is a handful, but frankly, aren't they all at five?  Her saying, "Now just STOP being silly!" is like saying, "No just STOP being a five-year-old boy." I think. But what do I know?

Oh shit, now I've gone into detail. And I seem to be talking to myself, getting all gnarled up and angry and... Oh dear. Got to let it lie. Got to, people. Or else will be shambling down the high street shouting, "Show me your gusset!" to nobody in particular, in no time at all.

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