Marianne Talbot Mum did not want to get up this morning. ‘Poor you’ I commiserated as I yanked open the curtains. ‘I didn’t want to get up either.’ ‘But,’ I said as I pulled off her duvet, ‘I’ve got to go to work: you’d hate to be on your own for seven hours’.
There’s no way I’d really leave mum on her own for seven hours or even seven minutes. But the threat worked and, still groaning, she allowed me to dress her.
But I do feel sorry for her. We all know the horrors of heaving ourselves out of a warm bed, especially on a day like today when the wind is howling fit to bust. I also remember how ghastly I was when mum had to get me up.
At first I moaned and groaned as impotently as mum does now. But then I got clever. I am rather ashamed to admit what I did. But it worked.
I would set my alarm for some dreadful time like 4am. When it went off I would noisily trip to the loo, and spent some time in there, groaning every now and then, and making sure the whole house knew where I was.
Then I would brush my teeth and go and tell mum I felt dreadful.
Mum just wanted to go back to sleep herself of course. She would wake up just enough to establish I wasn’t dying, then she’d tuck me back in bed, telling me to try to sleep.
This I did very successfully. In the morning though you would think I hadn’t slept a wink so sick had I been.
I know mum suspected me of lead-swinging. But in the morning rush she would often just give up. It must have seemed a great deal easier just to leave me, especially as she couldn’t be certain I wasn’t ill.
I would then have a delightful duvet day, reading, raiding the larder, and trying out her make-up.
Naturally by the end of the working day I was back in bed claiming to feel slightly better, but not at all sure I’d be ready for school in the morning.
Dad had more of the measure of me. He’d burst into the room singing ‘Wakey, wakey!’ ‘Rise and shine! ‘Shake a leg!’ He’d have the curtains open and the blankets off me before I knew what was happening.
Dad, of course, would have been up for hours, lighting the fires, getting the rayburn going and making sure there was enough hot water. In those days we had to scrape the ice off the inside of the windows in the morning.
Mum was once as devious as I was. Thank goodness for small mercies!