Clare's Day off.
Clare is my mother, Clare is now a divorcee who works every weekday which I love as it means just like many other teenager, I can get up when I want and just do the bare minimum without being judged by a disapproval parent. Since leaving my job last Saturday, it is the first week I've had off without having that dread of having to go back to work. Since I now have no job and no uni until September I've been catching up on my TV shows such as Special Victims Unit and reading the books that I've not had time to read, its been absolute bliss. Until this morning when I was rudely awakened by the hoover and Smooth Radio blaring out down stairs at eight in the morning. I looked at the clock, is it really eight o'clock? Why is Clare still here? She's going to be late for work. I get out of bed and walk down the stairs avoiding the light that is coming through the windows. I find her putting loads of washing in the machine singing terribly along to the radio, "Why aren't you at work, did they fire you?" I sound more alarmed than I meant to, it wouldn't be the loss of money that would bother me if my mum lost her job, it would be the fact that we would have to spend time together. "No I've got the day off, got hospital at half eleven." Shit! Not only do I have to go to the hospital with my mum but I'll be expected to spend the day with her and that can only go one of two ways. Way one entails us having a perfectly pleasant day together where we perhaps have a coffee at a little cafe in town and spend the evening in our pj's watching cheesy channel five films and eating take out. Way two is where we go to the hospital in which afterwards Clare will want a pint at a pub, possibly two before we go home where I'll have to drive us home, we'll probably argue on the way back over something one of us said or did and spend the evening in separate room and not talk to each other until the morning. It's fair to say that way two was today, the argument ladies and gentlemen, king prawns. Yes you read that right, we had an argument over king prawns, last night we had a Chinese takeaway in which mum ordered king prawn rice. I had two perhaps three but left the rest for her which would mean about 3 left. Except she accused me of eating all of them, I denied it of course because I would never do that, ever. The harmless accusations soon spiralled out, my mum being the queen of wind-up merchants kept pestering me, convinced that it was me, after all its just the two of us. I kept denying and denying but she wouldn't believe me. I tried not to snap as I am easily wound up, until finally, I said, "I didn't eat your fucking king prawns alright?" Her eyes wide in shock, I know you shouldn't swear at your parents but I just couldn't hold it back. As soon as the words came out I began to panic, the child inside me thinking, you've just added petrol to the fire, your gonna get a slap round the head, or a bollocking, or she might force you to socialise. Please don't make me socialise! Finally in the short silence that felt like a life time she turned to me, "Will you stop fucking swearing I don't know where you get it from, probably from your fucking father." She spat back not realising that she had sworn in her response. Looking back at this day makes me laugh and see how stupid it was but I suppose we all have arguments like this with out loved ones. With me its with Clare rather than the other people in my life. The moral of the story being that under no circumstances take your mother's king prawns, don't even look at them, and if you do deny, deny, deny!
After all this is just another day in the life as the Yorkshire Bookworm,
Phoebe x