Brighton Bard no.5

Shrinking Me

Daily Star alternative:

‘24 inch Mum discovered mutilated but happy in Seagull nest’

I am 5’ 8” (google the conversion to metric). By the end of the day of being a mother to 3 needy children, (4 if you include their father) I am between 2’ 3” and 3’1” – at a push.

My children make me shrink each day.

Not in a charming, magical, ‘Oh how will Mrs. Pepperpot get out of this tricky situation now that she has shrunk’ kind of way, but with actual, physical shrinkage. (Mental shrinkage has a dedicated post to itself – if I remember to write it).

Apart from breathing and going to the toilet by themselves (and let me make this clear, that doesn’t actually include replacing the toilet paper roll nor even necessarily flushing the toilet AND I even have to take breathing off the list when they have colds) I do everything for everybody.

ALL OF THE TIME.

And this shrinks me little by little - everyday.

The fault lies obviously with my partners’ genes. (I should have followed Sheila’s steps from my 2nd post) but it is too late now!

Even when I am busy with my real job of painting teeny, tiny words onto chips, the neediness doesn’t get any better, I just adjust my absence by minutiae planning and so as long as one of them can read (touch and go) there is no other thought required.

I am Dr. Frankenstein and have created not 1, not 2 but 4 ‘monsters’ of inability to do anything and now I can’t face explaining to any of them how to put a toilet roll onto a holder (and other important things) because it is so much easier for me to do it myself.

So when in the garden at 3pm, when I am just over 2’ tall, a hungry seagull swoops down and hooks what he thinks is a tasty snack, I’m quite relieved. I shall be someone else’s dinner tonight which will definitely save me cooking.

Just imagine, at first, slightly uncomfortable in the jaws (dramatic I know, should be beak) of a seagull but once adjusted, we are soaring above the streets, waving, not drowning, to my little Frankenstein monsters as they double take. I am like ‘Thumbelina’ on the swallow, but instead of escaping a bad marriage match to a mole, I’m being rescued from the clutches of monotonous motherhood.

‘Is that a miniature version of our mum, being carried away?”

I hear one say, vaguely worrying if that is the case, who will be there to make sure the new toilet roll makes it onto the holder.

But even at 24 inches tall, thrown into a nest of baby seagulls, would I revert to old habits? Would their incessant squawking get to me and suddenly,

‘Oh for f**k’s sake, you can peck on my right leg, you on my left and

if I can just squeeze this way a bit, you can have my arm’

just to shut them up.

Please don’t rescue me if this actually happens.

I’ll be happy and rested in this nest and will probably have a couple of rejected chips with random hand painted words in my pocket to keep us all quiet for a while.

And when the mutant, oversized seagull chicks (local to Brighton due to their high carb. diet of chips and small children) are asleep, I’ll climb out of the nest - which will have been built snuggled next to the enormous fake owl so many of us have on our Brighton roofs to prevent seagulls nesting - slide down the gutter (there is an advantage to being 24” tall) and meander home via a conveniently placed, teeny tiny version of a bigger supermarket, to buy some toilet paper.

But as I open the front door with its adjusted handle lowered to accommodate my daily shrinkage, I am greeted with … silence.

A note on the floor:

‘Run out of toilet roll,

Gone for pizza’

The one f**king day I’m stuck in a seagull nest.