Joe and Dianne Through The Looking Glass

Chapter 11 - Street Week

It was a long time since Alice had cause to moan about Monday mornings. Years ago when the children had been teenagers it was the one morning of the week she'd loathed. Getting Robert and Karen out of bed and off to school in time especially on a gloomy, dark Monday was a weekly challenge with little reward. It didn't seem to matter how she planned the weekend, by the time the clock rolled round again to the beginning of the week she would find herself using a mixture of forced jolly brightness (Joyce Grenfell eat your heart out) and increasingly louder and wilder threats to cajole the both of them from the comfort of their duvets, into school clothes and propel them out onto the pavement and on their way.

She had tried letting the pair of them do as they chose at the weekend – which invariably resulted in both teenagers lounging in bed until lunchtime then disappearing off with friends until their stomachs told them it was time to return home to be fed; both infuriatingly remembering unfinished homework on Sunday night just as Alice was trying to gently encourage them into bed. As an alternative, Alice had tried imposing a rigid routine; dragging both children out of bed by 9am on the Saturday and Sunday, forcing them to eat a good breakfast then hovering over them refusing all requests for food or breaks until homework was completed. Either way by Monday they were either so exhausted by staying up late or so at loggerheads with the sergeant major figure their mother had become that neither were in any state of mind to comply with the enforced timetable of an educational establishment. On good days by 8.45am Alice could be found sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by the debris of unfinished breakfasts, hands cupped around a steaming mug of tea, breathing deeply and slowly in an effort to bring down her heart rate. On bad days she was quite sure their elderly neighbours Mr and Mrs Johnson, horrified by the screaming, shouting and door slamming reverberating through the stud walls must be on the point of phoning the police to deal with the murder occurring next door. Quite frankly Alice wouldn't have blamed them.

Although she missed feeling like a mother Alice didn't miss those Monday mornings and since Matthew had taken early retirement it hadn't made very much difference what day it was, with one week merging into another marked only by the omnibus edition of the Archers and Weekend Women's Hour. Today was different though. Yesterday had been a very different Sunday to those Alice had grown accustomed to and for the first time in decades she had the horrifying feeling she was nursing a slight hangover. It had been Louise's fault. Popping in to the café the week before in her usual cloud of Chanel and aura of organised bossiness, she had informed Alice that she was to come to dinner on Sunday night. Alice's hastily thought up objections had been swept aside and her weakening defences crumbled even further when Louise had disarmed her by saying, "Darling, do come. It's just a few people from the book group and we want to get to know you a bit better. Honestly you're so interesting and you say such clever things we want you there to keep us all on our toes ............ but also .........well we think you could do with some friends"

Alice had been so taken aback by this last statement, which so closely echoed her own recent thoughts, that she had agreed and Sunday night had found her once more trembling on Louise's front door step a bottle of wine clutched in her hand. To her great surprise the evening had been fun. Far from the artistically arranged but ultimately unsatisfying cordon bleu meal which Alice had been dreading, Louise had cooked the kind of roast dinner which warms you from the inside out and leaves you feeling it won't be necessary or even possible to eat for a week. Conversation, lubricated by wine and a good meal, had flowed easily and by 11pm Alice had not only been declared winner of a confusing card game she hadn't until that evening known existed but to her great delight had also laughed so much she could feel her stomach muscles complaining. It had been a good evening but now Alice was aware that the combination of a few glasses of wine with an unaccustomed late night had made getting up in time to open up the café for the morning commuter rush somewhat of a challenge and she could feel a headache coming on.