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My husband and I have a little game that we play in
bed. I’m not clever enough yet to write blog-listings teasers, so that’s just a
literal statement. And we have a name for our game: ‘The Gin and Tonic
Question.’ It’s very easy to play, mainly because it involves absolutely no
action or reaction, and everyone’s a winner. The basic premise is to illustrate
how happy you are to be lying in bed by naming your minimum price for getting
up, getting dressed and – using only public transport – getting to a specific
bar in Soho for at least one gin and tonic.
I say it’s a measure of happiness; since having
children has taken our out-of-bed time in significantly different directions,
it’s really an indication of gender. My husband will usually refuse to head
back into town for less than £2,000, while I, having spent the day waiting for
the evening, will often price myself no higher than the free gin. The tonic is
negotiable, I’ll bring my purse.
I know happiness is subjective but I am a happy person.
There’s even a scale of distance named after me. If I say something’s just down
the road, or round the corner, that’s a good 20 minutes in the car to even the
marginally less optimistic. But I still fall in love with my husband on a
regular basis – even after 9 years 67 days, a stolen wedding dress (so not over
that), two bloated pregnancies, three resulting children and a cat that we’re
all allergic to. My life is good: I have amazing friends, I make money from
doing what I love, and I think the pillar-box red tiles on our bathroom floor
are inspired.
So it’s with real pain that I admit to having hit a
bit of a wall. For the first autumn in hazy memory, I’m finding it really hard
to get back into my London skin after the summer holidays. And I can see it in
other people around me too. Resuming normal life is proving difficult, even by
the end of September.
Maybe the problem is that I’ve just been too happy
this summer. How’s that for Polly Anna? Gin-fuelled trips to Soho aside, it’s a
truly wonderful thing finding yourself living the moment you knew would be one
of your most content. And this is mine: Walking back to our holiday home in its
French valley of sunflowers and chateaus, along a dusty track through a tiny vineyard,
following behind my husband who’s carrying a bottle of 10-year-old local Pineau
in one hand and holding the grubby fingers of his four-year-old son in the
other, holiday hat on head, shoulders light and nothing but that evening’s
dinner menu on his mind.
And then we’re home. And I’m suddenly in a world of
anger and frustration because the ironing board hasn’t been packed away, or one
of my children doesn’t have their shoes on by 9am. I have to find a way of
using this memory to that get me through the damp, domestic winter months, and
not use it to excuse countless sideways glances at the EasyJet winter-getaways
site.
Alternatively, we just never leave the capital
again, bring our reality back into a neat little box of daily contentment. I
have a friend who was on holiday as a teenager with her single mum – a trip
abroad that had no doubt taken months of planning and saving to provide – and
as they walked around a gorgeous square one balmy evening she said dreamily,
‘Wouldn’t it be great if we walked around that corner and we were back in
England with all my mates.’
