Birds and Bees.

It’s been another heavy week. The weekend disappeared in a haze of research and essay writing, re-writing and referencing. On Tuesday evening, looking like something the cats regularly drag in, Hubby had had enough.
“Alice, you look like…”.
“I know, I know”, I said quickly, did he really have to kick me whilst I was down, “I haven’t had much time for poncing myself up recently.
“I don’t care whether you had ponced yourself up”, he said, shaking his head in wearied disappointment, “I was just hoping that you might change out of your pyjamas occasionally and rake a brush through your hair.”
“I looked very smart at college earlier if you must know”, I said, hoitily, “I had no choice. I had to meet with my mentor”.
“Mentor or dementor?” Visions of me wandering around a school corridor, a shadowy, Harry Potteresque thing, sucking my very soul out, made me shudder.
“Oh don’t darling, that’s not really the pep talk I need right now. No she seemed very nice. Organised and supportive.”
“Anyway, go and get your glad rags on. I’m taking you out on a date”. Really? We hadn’t been out together for weeks. I jumped up.
“Fab!”, I said, kissing him, “Where are we going?”
“You’ve forgotten haven’t you?” I racked my brains. What had I forgotten? Damn it. Think. Think. We’d just had our anniversary, it’s not my birthday until next week. Nope I didn’t have a clue. I shrugged my shoulders.
“It’s the PTAs AGM. You are the vice-chair Alice for God’s sake. Haven’t you prepared anything?” I put my head in my hands. Of course, the AGM, it had completely escaped me. I looked at my watch, it was 6.50. We had ten minutes.
Hubby waited for me in the car whilst I ran upstairs, tore off my pyjamas, pulled on some socks, a pair of jeans, a sweater off the back of the chair, which I’d meant to wash but which still sported egg yolk from a soft boiled egg I’d had at the weekend. I scraped my hair back into a ponytail, kissed the children, gave babysitting advice to the eldest and dashed down the stairs and into the car.
“Shoes?” asked Hubby, his fingers, drumming the steering wheel impatiently. I looked at my feet.
“Sh..”
“No, shoes”, Hubby interrupted, anticipating some vulgar, scatological utterance. He could talk.
I ran back inside, picked up my boots, ran back to the car and, as though chasing robbers, said to Hubby, “Drive”.
Luckily the pub where the AGM was being held was far enough away to give me the time to struggle into my boots and zip them up but when we finally entered the pub, flustered, we needn’t have rushed. There were eight people there. In other words, the current committee. My shoulders slumped. I think, given our present commitments, that most of us had planned to step down, instead we once again proposed and seconded each other’s positions and briefly discussed the Christmas fair. Then, the gavel came down and I relished a large Kir courtesy of the treasurer and a couple of ham sandwiches, courtesy of the pub.
We left soon after as I had yet to plan for the next day. Walking into the house, I heard screams of laughter upstairs, emanating from the youngest girls’ bedroom. I crept in.
“Ahem”. They both looked up but instead of looking guilty and diving under their duvets because they should have been fast asleep, they were delighted to see me.
“Mummy”, said the youngest, squeezing me tightly, “It’s so nice to see you” and then, right out of the blue the eight year old said, “Can you tell us about sex?”
Oh bloody hell. Not tonight.
“This is kissing isn’t it?” asked the Red-Head, gently planting a kiss on her pillow.
“It is darling, yes”, I concurred.
“And this is snogging” she added, burying her face into the very same pillow with all the passionate fervour of Rudolph Valentino. Her elder sister was hysterical.
“Do, it again, do it again!”, she goaded her.
“What? Snogging?” and once again she attacked her pillow. It was getting out of hand.
“Come on now girls, bed-time”.
“Have you stopped having babies?” asked the 8 year old.
“Yes, darling”, I replied, tucking her in.
“Because of sex?”. Oh God.
“Sort of”.
“Why?”
“Daddy had an operation”.
“Did they cut his willy off?”
“No they cut his tubes”.
“His pubes?”, said the other child. There’s something about that word that unhinges the dourest child, ergo mine were almost distracted with hysteria. This was impossible.
“Not pubes darling, tubes. Men have tubes inside”.
“Where the worms come out?” My God, my previous sex education talks had evidently been an outright disaster. Where was that glass of wine? I tried my best to go over it again. A sort of Bite Size revision version, but as I Ieft the room, turning the light off and blowing them a kiss, one whispered to the other, “Mummy’s been sexed four times”. Their father would probably agree.