Malone mixes parenting with pleasure
I managed to get an hour out the house. Bliss. I cheekily asked my neighbours upstairs if they wouldn’t mind sitting, after all it’s only ten foot down from their flat! They’re practically still sitting in the same house (just in a room with none of their belongings…).
They kindly agreed as I bribed them with the offer of a free audio lead that they’d asked to borrow. Nothing in life is free, especially electronic equipment leads from single parents. I felt a bit bad asking them, but I’d already asked four of my close friends and everyone was busy and hey, I really needed to get out of the same four walls!
My boyfriend suggested we go on a pub crawl. Doing this in a hour was no mean feat. It involved some very quick glugging back of rum and Twitter-like conversations that had to be abbreviated into 140 characters.
When we arrived home, my neighbour’s boyfriend was watching my sleeping child’s fave cartoon, Horrid Henry and hoped we’d go out for longer as he wanted to see the end. I noticed he’d brought down his hula hoop.
“I was complaining loudly of carpet burn, and gasping”
He showed me a few hula moves. My whole flat stunk of charred wood as the couple had been tag teaming down to the beach for a friend’s BBQ.
This is what I love about Brighton. A hula hooping accountant is my neighbour and they babysit for audio leads. Amazing. Whenever I manage to grasp some ‘me time’ it becomes this huge rush to have a good time quickly, trying not to upset kind sitters. Power hour parent fun!
The next day I spent six hours doing something I wish would only take one! Building a flat-pack bunk bed… Need I say more? If I ever hear the name Alan again I will scream. It’s not even a key, is it?! The dastardly ‘key’ Allen gave us a right run around.
“Where’s Allen?!” Allen was always under my foot or hiding under the hammer. To be fair Allen must have been knackered, all that tightening and loosening of screws. The instructions were easy, sure, they were colour coded, easy. But someone had forgotten to colour code the pieces of wood too, so the instructions made no sense whatsoever.
Classic flat-pack hell. I also laid a carpet (why did I wear shorts?). I was on my knees for an hour, my knees were red and sore and this was not sexy. But if my neighbours had been listening they would have thought we were having a great long night in.
I was complaining loudly of carpet burn and gasping things like “Now screw harder, now!” while my boyfriend was shouting at me, “I can’t! It’s too tight! Loosen up, woman!”
