Why Mummy Drinks: The Sunday Times Number One Bestselling Author

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Jane doesn’t think I’ve done anything right,’ I said sadly. ‘She called me a catastrophising control freak who always interferes. And anyway, I don’t want them to be resilient and independent at Christmas! Can’t they just do it for the rest of the year, and then at Christmas be overcome with their need for their darling mama and return to the bosom of their loving family, so we can roast chestnuts over an open fire and sing carols round the piano, and laugh and laugh and be merry?’ I was happy to get to the end. Too much use of the F word for me. Not a fan of the Diary format. “ L. Billings. Well, they won’t be on Christmas Day,’ I snapped. ‘They’ll be bucolically adorable. And then you come home, cheeks a-glowing –’ Well, she miraculously learnt to walk again, and her joie de vivre and positive outlook caused that to happen, but she still got run over! Surely in a just world, the little girl who brought joy to the sorrowing hearts of an entire town wouldn’t get run over in the first place!’

Yes, well,’ I wailed. ‘That was when there didn’t seem to be any hope that they ever would grow up and bugger off! I only wanted a piss and maybe a bath without someone hammering on the door demanding things from me. I didn’t actually want them to go off to the other side of the world forever.’ Several people have asked recently what advice Mummy would give to new, or newish parents. Obviously the most terrifying thing about this is that there are people out there who are under the impression that Mummy knows anything at all about parenting, and is in some way a responsible adulting type of person. Mummy can hear the derisive laughter from pretty much everyone she knows at this notion. His mother informed us that she had assumed his wife would be buying his advent calendars for him, now he was married, which came as something of a surprise to me, as I did not remember anything in our wedding vows about ‘To Be Your Bloody Mother From This Day Forth …’ I bought him a calendar the next year as a joke, but he didn’t seem to realise the joke part, going so far as to tell me that for future reference, he actually preferred a Thornton’s calendar to a Dairy Milk one, but he appreciated the thought. And so I continue to buy my forty-year-old husband an advent calendar every year, because apparently I am his mum now, and he is a spoilt child.”

I was trying very hard to hide my disappointment that Jane wasn’t coming home for Christmas, and so I resorted to my default setting in times of emotional distress of online panic shopping.

So many, laugh out loud moments. Don’t read this book in company, I couldn’t stop laughing. The worst bit was Semen Smoothies! Yes, I would have bought a new blender as well!!I rather tearfully regaled Simon with this Lost Vision over dinner and he said he was cancelling the Hallmark movies channel. I DON’T KNOW! I don’t know what I’m doing. Maybe I’ll drop out of university and go from Verbier straight to Ibiza and join Persephone as a bloody shot girl.’ You talk through everything. Every film, TV and radio programme. That’s not the point, though. The point, my darling, is – this is our chance to do this. To do the beach Christmas, or the country house hotel Christmas. There was always some reason before. Too expensive, the kids had things on, family was insisting on descending. But now, it’s just us. We can do whatever we want!’

The plot’s a bit daft, featuring at least one completely ridiculous character, and a bit slim, too, but this is a diary and the fun is found in the details and the nods of recognition for mums caught up in a similar life stage. Final thoughts Last year the local primary school borrowed him to star as the donkey because he’s so enormous. You can hardly call him “poor little Barry”.’ I enjoyed the book. It was very funny but rather risqué. I particularly found the Easter Egg hunt and the Fire Work display very memorable. If there was a problem with the book, it was the bad language and too much information about her Sisters children's Toilet habits." Maureen. Maybe if I'd read this before becoming a mother I may have seriously thought of finding a contraception that liked me. Although then I just wouldn't have understood the book anyway lol. I considered this suggestion, trying to find the flaws. I was very discombobulated by this whole notion of going away by ourselves somewhere nice for Christmas. Going away at Christmas meant discomfort and other people’s houses and rules, and possibly sleeping on a deflating blow-up bed and trying to find a loo for a discreet poo after too much rich food without anyone knowing it was you who had pooed. To go away in luxury with lavatories aplenty in which to poo at will was decadence and not at all in the Spirit of Christmas.

I do not. I do not do either of those things. Just because I take the time to consider the worst-case scenario …’

Funny, sweary, mostly relateable. The diary entries open with a scene familiar to those familiar with the blog: Mummy is making a list of how her life could work…then compares it with how her life really works. For parents of young children, or who remember having young children, this will likely entertain and cause nods of familiarity in equal measure. The pressure involved in try to drag the children out the door to school…the arguments you just cannot win (your child does not care about the threat of scurvy)…and the bliss of relaxing at the end of what may well feel like a very long day indeed, only to reflect that it is, in fact, only Monday – Monday! – and everything you did today will need doing again tomorrow. The book group liked the diary format of 'Why Mummy Drinks', comparing it to 'The Diary of Adrian Mole', but this time with a 39 year old (equally irritating and confused) mum. Oh my God, Mother, it’s only bloody Verbier, will you stop saying “Abroad” like a xenophobic Nancy Mitford character?’ JUST LEAVE ME ALONE, MUM! And I haven’t ruined Christmas, that’s such a horrible thing to say to me!’ This year, she wants nothing more than to perfectly fig up the pudding and sit by the fire reading aloud from A Christmas Carol to a rapt, rosy-cheeked audience. But, just like all Mummy’s best-laid plans, this year’s Festive Vision is in danger of being totally derailed by her chaotic family. There’s not much chance of any action under the mistletoe, and the kids are just not playing ball.Never had I been more convinced of it than this year, when I was going to have the cosiest, most delightful tiny family Christmas with just Jane and Peter and Simon and me! In all my many quests for the perfect Christmas we’d almost never achieved this – a Christmas with just the four of us – and I was quite sure it would be utterly magical. I hadn’t seen either of the children in ages, and what could be better than a Christmas reunion? Hallmark had literally built a brand around exactly that: families reunited for the holidays, front doors flung open and prodigal offspring tumbling over the threshold on a tide of laughter and candy canes and gently falling snow! Mummy’s carefully laid plans of perfectly figging up the pudding, while sitting by the fire reading aloud from A Christmas Carol to her rapt rosy-cheeked audience, are suddenly in tatters. Verbier is only in Switzerland,’ Simon argued. Ah, Switzerland. Not France. Must remember that. ‘Even Thailand isn’t that far in this day and age. And it’s hardly forever; it’s only for Christmas!’