Oh, friends, Ta muchley.

I have had a Month. One of those months where everything has been stressful, awkward and meanly aggravating. Financial necessity requires me to work, and pore endelessly over bank statements, denying them ice-creams and losing my temper about it. It also requires me to meal plan to a tomato skins breadth, and this results in shouting and fighting at the table ("I HATE this food! Can I have a yoghurt?" NO! they are for your LUNCHBOX and there are precisely 5 of them!) It also requires me to take on work, so I am exam marking ( hollow laugh from anyone who has ever done this). This also requires me to take out my textbooks and spend the evenings swotting up on Metternich and Pre-unification Italy, not to mention Revolutionary France and pre-unification Germany, Cold War Europe and Vietnam. This results in husband watching too much TV, us not talking, and me stressing about how much I need to know to know how much the students don't know.

So, marking an exam will result in me going crazy and the in-laws having the kids for days over half term, despite being deaf and not admitting it and too old to cope for more than a few hours at a time, and Me not drinking for a month, staying up late, marking, and Me fretting about everything else in the meantime. And Me still cooking, cleaning, school running, and doing everything else. And Me collapsing in heap.

I have not worked in so long i've forgoten how to be brainy. I know I know this. I know I am capable. But i've forgotten how to be confident that i'm capable. I know, perusing the mark scheme, and that feeling in my gut when I see a student completely pass by the fact it's METTERNICH writing the document, that screams "D" grade!" , that I can still do this. But still, my primary talent is wiping arses, and peeling the white bits off of tangerines so they are edible to Veruca Salt, aka My daughter. I used to be someone. I used to be able to juggle jobs and teach myriad classes of varying talents and now I am panicking about exam papers and incapable of wiping arses and dealing with the school run and marking at the same time. Of course, daughter has picked this time to have a "pushing boundaries" moment and reduce me to tears about food, and yes, doing a poo. At the same time as frantically reviewing post-Napoleonic Europe, i'm mainlining Sears and any info on toileting problems I can find, trying to book a hospital appointment for a poo problem. Son picks this time to get put on ther naughty cloud, for the first time ever,highlighting the "MY MUM DOESN'T GIVE ME ATTENTION" vibe in the house.

So, cheap sausage meat dishes, combined with child pressure, and self hate have combined to make me feel like the world's worst mother over the past few weeks. Not to mention the worlds worst partner ("Yes, i'll be up in a minute, i'm just channelling Robespierre"). So thank God for friends. Who plied me with wine and fed my kids and got me a bit tipsy too early on a Friday. And so have ended my day quietly and tipsily, with cider in the bank, and a bit of bucked uppedness. An unlikely bunch, one says "Luv", another is Northern, another from Surrey, all afloat in Fenland, and all prepared to ply me with wine and stroke my worrisome ego.

Now all I need is a job in school hours that pays properly, and a husband who will share the domestic chores equally, and kids who won't mind if I go out to work. And pink elephants on parade.