by Fallon from the novel
Forgotten by Nikki Mahood
I've got the post-Christmas blues, it gets worse every year,
November arrives and brings with it birthdays and the beginning of the season
to be jolly. My son gets a year older, my husband gets a year older, I
get a year older and then it’s Christmas, not just the day, but the season,
parties and presents, shopping and stressing, then Boxing Day arrives and you
think to yourself 'what the hell? It's over?'. Or I do, January appears
after midnight on New Year’s Eve, bringing with it resolutions and sales, more
shopping, more stressing, over resolutions failed in the first seven days and
clothes that are to die for but don't fit because Christmas was just here and
it left a few Quality Street induced pounds and ounces behind. My life isn't
any different than it was two months ago, sure three of our four piece family
are older, there are new bits of Lego to trod on and more glittery fairy wings
than any little girl needs leaving a trail of sparkling devastation on every
soft furnishing in the house, but aside from a decision to join the gym or draw
more, I'm unchanged.
It’s a strange sensation, to fail at something you were never
really committed to from the outset. This year I promised myself I would
cook more, no, not reheat M&S ready meals or the food my mother prepared
and froze, but actually follow recipes, slice and dice, bubble and boil, meals
that are suitable for my adventurous husband and son, my baby girl with her
sensitive palate and me, the fussy cow. On the second of January I started
it, I bought a Nigella book (secretly hoping I could learn to be sexy while
cooking), picked what looked like a simple chicken dish we would all enjoy and
strode off to the supermarket with a hyperactive three year old boy and an
eighteen month old girl who recently learnt how to release herself from the
buggy. It started off well, carrots and potatoes lay on the bottom of my
basket, that's the aisle the boy doesn't want to have anything from, but then,
well then I needed flour (Yorkshire puddings, with chicken, I know it's wrong,
but they're yummy and basically pancakes. Aren't they?) of course the flour
aisle is the baking aisle. A cacophony of Thomas the Tank Engine bun
mixes and sparkly sprinkles, this set them both off, the ‘I wants’ and the roaring
No when I declined to purchase them, I grabbed the wrong flour, corn
flour, and headed to get the cream for the sauce. Of course
that's near the yoghurts and cheese, specifically Mini Babybels and Petit
Filous, James' favourites, more of the I want and Nows from him and then Edie
let herself out of the buggy, unbuttoned her duffle coat, casting it
aside and ran off down the aisle faster than Usain Bolt at this summer's
Olympics. However unwisely, I left the boy unattended and in a more Mo
Farah after a curry fashion, ran after Edie, who wasn't hard to track,
she'd left a trail of glitter in her wake.
Once I'd retrieved her, accepted a good kick to the shins
that, were she using against an actual attacker and not her mother, I would be
proud of, and slung her over my shoulder, returning to a scene that looked like
a massacre in a dairy plant. There was my son, sitting on the floor, eating a
Petit Filous by squeezing the sides of the tub together with one hand and
alternating licks of yoghurt with nibbles of Mini Babybel, including wax.
