The pub lady

I am in the world of adults. Men and women adults. I am there as an illegal indulgence, tiny and less tiny children running around just slowly enough that no one yet asks us to leave.

The pub is my own little bribe to help me through the after school hours of a not-really-proper-working day Friday.

We go to swimming lessons first thing after school and I take great care not to stop at the pub afterwards. At just 4.15, there are too few ticks on my report card.

We've just started swimming lessons recently. They are what proper parents do. Extra-curricular activity. Kind mothers and fathers explain about the necessity of swimming lessons. For safety apparently. I straighten my frown out. Too late, I've already blurted our less cautious truth. Fionn has asked for swimming lessons every week since the infamous, inaugural swim week back in February, which is well over two hundred days ago. We are here for fun.

I organised swimming lessons with a contact from one of my proper mother friends. All of my mother friends are proper mothers with busy after school schedules. Now we have schedule thing too.The child with no tv, no playstation and apparently considerably fewer toy cars than any other child in the entire world, gets to frolic in a wetsuit.

Post swimming lessons we get home without recourse to the ice cream shop or the pub. Two ticks for the mother. While the children play bike races alternately with destroying my garden, I behave quite nicely. Dinner, chooks, washing, nappies and you can go to the pub at six. Dinner-chooks-washing-nappies-six o'clock finish.

At 5.15 I've done dinner and the children must be happy because they haven't grizzled for their father. Technically I haven't grizzled for their father but in practice I can tell you that in forty-four minutes I'll be sharing the load and it won't involve looking at the dishes bench which is never, ever empty.

My mummy friends don't drag their children to the pub. None of their children announce "I pinched the principal's bottom at the pub." They're all at jujitsu or gymnastics.

So six o'clock rolls around and I find shoes for us all. I'm not without some aspirations to respectability. Kindly Dad buys us drinks and chips and I make a note to myself to switch back to beer next time. Gin and tonic looks very much like the children's lemonades.

The Sally Army lady is on her pub crawl. I know this Sally lady and this is the beginning of my undoing. The lovely Muriel has stepped between my worlds and exposed my facade. Muriel is a great friend of my beloved elderly cousin. At Cousin Mary's, I am a good girl. I visit often, the children behave there, I even remember birthdays and special occasions.

Muriel brings her box round our table. Once again, I only have my money card and that suddenly seems not innocuous but bad. The children interrupt and I hiss at them. I see it all from the good lady's eyes. Children needing a bath and a bedtime story and instead the mother hisses at them over gin when they dare to ask for some attention.

So then it turns custardy and the un-nappied child needs to poo and the kindly Dad is outside burning his lungs. The three of us traipse to the ladies and girl dances on the landing while the boy is on the toilet and I figure we should go home but I have one more drink and so does the smoker and before we know it the chidlren are running wild which we said they couldn't and oh cripes we really had better go home.

So like the final recessional hymn but with more hissing, we bundle out the door and Kent is home to put the children to bed which was a good half of my plan anyway.

Adult conversations? I think I had three. Evidence that I have the stamina for parenting properly past five o'clock Friday? Not much.

Women's Christian Tempreance Ladies, is this what you envisaged when you fought for universal suffrage in the run up to 1893?