I woke up this morning, with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt (ooh, this sounds like the beginning of a Johnny Cash song). Actually, my head, my neck, my throat, the whole of my almost middle-aged body was aching.
At this stage, I have to hold my hands up and say that I knew I would feel like this today. I felt dreadful yesterday, felled by the first of many illnesses brought home from school by the germ-ridden infants – Happy New Year, Mum!
So, of course, I had a hot lemon drink, put on my PJs, went to bed early …..
…..no. No, I didn’t.
I had an evening out arranged, tickets bought and paid for and a babysitter booked. And I am too tight to waste all that. Way, way, way too tight. After all, that’s what Paracetamol and Nurofen were invented for – to work as a temporary sticking plaster to hold you together long enough to go out dancing and drinking. (Perhaps Humpty Dumpty’s fate could have been rather different had he just popped into the local pharmacy, instead of relying on all the king’s horses and all the king’s men)
So, propped up with Nurofen and Paracetamol, I put on my game face and went out last night to a funny little jazz club in the depths of Streatham, called The Hideaway. (And, readers, it really was hidden away – the entrance is down the side of a building, through crack-alley) to see the legendary Mica Paris.
And she was amazing, truly amazing. She belted our her classics with her superb gospel-trained voice, and really engaged with the audience. (On the subject of audience, it was a rare thing for us middle-aged, or nearly middle-aged for me, folk to be amongst the youngest on a night out in London. Perhaps it was the music; perhaps it was the dancing or perhaps it was the Nurofen/Paracetamol combined with the dark lighting, but I actually felt young again for a moment!)
But, after every late night out, an early morning must cometh. And always at 7am precisely in our house, with a loud Cockadoodledoo from Big Boy.
Once I finally managed to drag my sorry, and now feeling decidedly middle-aged, ass out of bed, I decided that crafts were the way forward. (Well, the boys went out for the first footie training session in the cold ….. bbbrrrrrrr, don’t fancy that much)
So, with a little set-up at the beginning, and quite a lot of scrubbing at the end, I got my hour of peace and quiet. Thank goodness Littlest Angel is a huge fan of crafts.
So, a big thank you last night to Messrs Nurofen and Paracetamol. And an even bigger thank you today to whoever invented the whole idea of crafts!
