Short Story: The Land Of Flourescent Poo

Short Story: The Land Of Flourescent Poo

I’m young, free and single. At 22 I am probably at the prime of my life. But I am starting to worry. If my friends keep reproducing I won’t have any drinking buddies left. This weekend I visited my hometown and nothing much had changed. The same people still live at the same addresses. Apart from the fact that each time I go home they seem to have multiplied, and instead of putting the worlds to rights over a bottle of wine, it’s discussing family tax credits and the prices of baby milk whilst changing a shitty nappy. I never knew baby poo was such a fluorescent yellow.

Babies sort of revolt me. I don’t know how many times I can say the words, ‘oh he’s so beautiful’ through my teeth like I’ve just eaten road grit. They all look the same. I have a panic attack every time a friend walks towards me to place their smelly little bundle of joy in my arms. Please, I am a baby-free zone.

If it’s not babies it’s weddings. I managed to avoid my friend's hen night on Friday because I had tickets to see Leona Lewis, but the big day is on Friday and I guess I am going to have to make an appearance. My plus-1 invite is an insult. There isn’t even a free bar. The last time I saw my friend we drank two bottles of wine and she was sick down the side of my bed whilst I slept uncomfortably on the floor. This was after she told me that she really didn’t want to get married and having her son was the biggest mistake of her life.

So why is there this big rush for everyone to throw away their lives? It is just making me look bad. Even my fat friends, who used to be my allies, are now cohabiting.

You could call my mother an inspiration. Around a week ago another friend told me that I intimidate men and will probably spend the rest of my life alone. Don’t worry, she meant it as ‘a compliment’. I guess it just came out wrong after ten pints of cider. It didn’t help that I was sitting in the smoking area, being chatted up by some guy, and she blurted out ‘well you’ve been with hundreds of men. They probably get scared that they’ve got small willies or something.’ You should have seen the look of horror on this guys face. I tried to rectify the situation by explaining to him that I actually hadn’t slept with hundreds of men, and I didn’t think that he had a small willy. But the damage had already been done. So the next day I called my mother in tears, sobbing ‘Mother do you think I am going to spend the rest of my life alone?’ ‘

‘Well you had better hope so,’ she replied. ‘I can’t wait for your dad to piss off and leave me. Then it will just be me and the dog.’

My mother says she wishes she had spent her whole life alone. I don’t know what made her think it’s acceptable to say this to her children. Nethertheless she is probably right.

By the time we arrived in my hometown on Sunday evening, my mother had already made her way through around five bottles of wine. Jelly is my drunken mother. 'Mother, don’t stand too close, you stink of vomit.'

It was my nana’s sister’s wedding anniversary and Jelly, Bruder and I were eating sausages on sticks at her party, although I hardly even know the woman. Neither does my mum really, but she was still throwing up at the bottom of her driveway.

Personally, I would not want to celebrate ten years of marriage cleaning up my niece’s sick out of the plant pots. I think at this point you know it’s time for a divorce. But divorces are expensive and inconvenient – that’s what’s keeping my mum and dad together – and hence why my mother gets uncontrollably drunk at the first opportunity to present itself. Usually this involves flashing the neighbours and some form of complaint being filed with the police.

My life cannot turn out this way. I travel back to the land of fluorescent poo and I realise what a lucky escape I have had. 4 years ago I was millimetres away from spending the rest of my life with a man who had my name tattooed across his knuckles and tucked his tracksuit bottoms into his socks. I was fat – I have a picture of myself blue-tacked to my mirror to remind myself of the obese monster I once was. I was engaged – to a man who thought that Tony Blair was the president of England and who had never heard of Adolf Hitler. I should have been pregnant – if I had had a half decent reproductive system that worked. I was a miserable bitch. You would have thought that discovering that the Mole, my fiancé, had got a sixteen year old girl pregnant in our bed the weekend before I left to go to university would have turned me into even more of a miserable bitch. It didn’t (although some may beg to differ). My mother made sure of it.

Lost somewhere in traffic on the outskirts of Manchester my mother and I were starting World War 3. I hit my mother over the head with the AA guide to British roads. My mother snatched the AA guide to British roads out of my hand, tore it up and scattered the pieces over the dashboard. The posh dickheads in the BMWs beside us in the traffic jam tutted and shook their heads in disapproval. The yobs in the modified Renault Clios bibbed us in encouragement. ‘We’re going to end up in fucking Moss Side,’ my mother screamed. ‘Oh mother, don’t be so dramatic,’ I hissed, ‘we’re not going to end up in fucking Moss Side. Anyway, I’m not going to university. I don’t want to go. You can’t force me.’

‘You ARE going to university. If not you will end up like me. Is that what you want?’

And that was it. I had no choice. I had to go to university. I had been threatened with a fate worse than death.

My mum reached for the glove compartment, passed me a Richmond Superking, and we sat in silence for a while, filling our lungs with nicotine flavoured smoke. The war was over. I was going.

Who would have thought that 4 years later, I would have forgotten all about the Mole, I would have lived in France and Germany, I would have completed a marathon (the full 26.2 miles), I would no longer be fat, I would have backpacked the East Coast of Australia, would have dated the most 'handsome man in the world', I would have translated a book and I would have a job in Asia....

If getting married and having babies is a way to keep everything the same, then I guess I want change.

I go home and everything is the same.

In our bathroom the taps still haven’t been fixed – the hot water comes out of the cold tap and vice versa.

My mum still spends more of the weekly shopping budget on nuts and bird seed than she does on food for the actual humans. I keep warning her that if she keeps feeding them squirrels we’re going to have a ninja squirrel army in the back garden, but still she likes to sit there at the patio doors watching them.

My dad still steals the kettle in a morning to take into the bathroom and wash himself with. I’ve tried explaining that the world now has taps which produce hot water (although in our house they’re back to front). I think he just likes washing with the kettle.

My nana still smokes like a chimney, even though she quit about ten years ago.

I don’t need to call my friend before I ‘pop in for a cup of tea’, to check that she lives in the same flat or to check that she is in. I know she will be there. Some things never change. Apart from this time she has two babies, and not just one.